Intro to Cutie

I’m recovering from an obsession with first principles and believe I’ve found new medicine for it in a story about a silly robot.

The story: “Reason” (1941) by Isaac Asimov. I highly recommend reading it regardless of whether you read any further on this page. If you’d rather a summary, here’s a shortened version of Wikipedia’s:

.̩₊̣.̩✧*̣̩˚̣̣⁺̣‧.₊̣̇.‧⁺̣˚̣̣*̣̩⋆·̩̩.̩̥·̩̩⋆*̣̩˚̣̣⁺̣‧.₊̣̇.‧⁺̣˚̣̣*̣̩✧·.̩₊̣.̩

Powell and Donovan are assigned to a space station which supplies energy via microwave beams to other planets. The robots that control the energy beams are led by QT-1, nicknamed Cutie, an advanced model with highly developed reasoning ability. Using these abilities, Cutie decides that space, stars and the planets beyond the station do not really exist, and that the humans that visit the station are unimportant, short-lived and expendable.

The humans initially attempt to reason with QT-1, until they realize that they cannot convince it otherwise. Their attempts to remove Cutie physically also fail, as the other robots have become disciples and refuse to obey human orders. The situation seems desperate, as a solar storm is expected, potentially deflecting the energy beam, incinerating populated areas. When the storm hits, the beam operates perfectly.

Powell and Donovan thus come to the realization that, although the robots themselves were not consciously aware of doing so, and even claimed to be in disbelief about such, they had been following the first and second laws of robotics (#1 to cause no harm to humans; #2 to always obey humans unless doing so conflicts with #1) all along. Cutie knew, on some level, that it would be better suited to operate the controls than Powell or Donavan, so, lest it endanger humans and break the first law by obeying their orders, it subconsciously orchestrated a scenario where it would be in control of the beam.

Powell and Donovan realize that there is no need to do anything for the rest of their tour of duty. Cutie's religion cannot be eliminated, but since the robot performs its job just as well, it is moot, even if Cutie continues to perform his duties for a perceived deity, rather than for the benefit of the humans.

You’ll probably want to return to the above, you’ll know when.

Denying the Notion

The thought that only “correct” prior intentions and circumstances can produce good effect plagued me for half a decade--good effect being:

Living well for oneself and others, making that life a discourse with reality that leaves it changed in a net-positive way after one’s death.

Issues are found immediately among the terms: good, well, positive; relative to what? To why? Maybe whom?

The notion of God was the obvious answer. Too obvious. I couldn’t relate to those who caulked the holes in reality with faith. It’s not that I’ve been without convincing holy experience in life. The sobs ripped from me when first touching the Western Wall, the thunder in my sense of being when my egg cracked; neither felt explainable except as shocks from the divine. But there has always been an after, a beyond. The web of answers spun out from godshock always ended loose and hanging into a greater expanse of uncertainty. God by definition should be totality, right? What’s a girl to do? Seek a greater sense of God, it seems.

Compounding Despair

To be without any sense of the answer--the First Answer--is a sexy despair. It puts one among the bereft of myth, like a shade caught on the bank of the Styx or a star-crossed lover beseeching the heavens. Yet for all their theatrical beauty, these are archetypes of beggars. Seeking effect and being unable to produce on their own, shades and lovers solicit the power of others; my quest for purpose was intended to be a rationale for a wielding of power--a thing I’d actually continued to accrue despite the theater of despair. Through some vile form of spiritual chemistry the contradiction of capable hand and faint heart produced a new despair. This one was not sexy; rather potent, and paralyzing.

Spiritual paralysis does not affect the body. I recently learned the term “philosophical zombie,” and it kind of tracks (especially when you consider real-life zombies are made through the use of paralytic poison). One goes through all the motions of a life but their feet never fully touch the ground; their lips never truly kiss the ones they love. The soul is not fully present to complete the motions. A piece is transfixed (paralyzed) elsewhere. That place, in my case, being impalement upon an existential contradiction. Unable to be carry the skewered part of me to other places for nourishment or recuperation, it withered.

My search in vain for the Answer became a search in vanity as that separate piece grew weak. Despite the apparent virtue and my continuation of the act, I developed a resentment for the search. I stopped truly engaging attempts to express the First Answer, falling to assumption that every explanation would turn up incomplete. And having bound my ability to make decisions or affect the world on my own principles (intended to be derived from First Principles!), I grew yet more despondent. One could call this cowardice--the inability to move without conviction--and they would probably be right. I’m a coward who attempted reform, failed for a time, then found grace in darkness.

Hole

I cannot describe here, for social purposes, what sort of journey under the moon finally reinvigorated the separate piece; but it came back screaming. It came back, and although the contradiction of heart and hand was now as set as its own material, as shrapnel engulfed by skin, still that piece ripped away from the skewer.

I cannot describe here, because it is ineffable, what it feels like for a soul to bleed; but I will try to describe the hole. As with the “place” of impalement above, this is a metaphysical sensation. An uncertainty like that which existed at the edges of incomplete images of God, no longer at polite periphery; now howling through one’s core. A queasy violation that I accepted as better than the stillness of years prior. Aristotle says motion is divine and the divine feels terrible.

I need to emphasize, the hole does not feel separate from the rest of my spiritual being; my soul is not wrapped around it. The hole, an awareness of uncertainty in totality, has become a part of me. Assumption has slaked every prior despair. I am no shade and no desperate lover. Churning ignorance is not where I stop, it is where I begin. I am free to move with it.

Wiggle Your…?

Unfortunately, capacity isn’t actuality. I think of that scene at the beginning of Kill Bill when the Bride is trying to regain the use of her legs to drive a car after a yearslong coma. It is a poignant display of both director Quentin Tarantino’s skeezy little foot fetish and the immense difficulty in overcoming inertia. For over a minute the camera cuts between our heroine channeling all her willpower, verbally intoning “wiggle your big toe,” then to the still-comatose piggy refusing to move. “Wiggle your big toe,” she commands, and Tarantino has us confirm again and again in screen-filling clarity that the toe does not wiggle. An indeterminate amount of time passes until finally--in glorious close-up--the toe wiggles.

“Hard part’s over.” the Bride declares; and she’s off to her killing spree.

For myself (also freshly awake, unimpaled) there has been a similar sense of inertia, but nothing to stare at and channel will towards. How do you “wiggle your big toe” out of spiritual paralysis? A new despair came alchemizing as the question moldered over my brain for weeks into months. Something else to get snagged on? Oh god, is life just a series of wounds?

Becoming Cutie

Scroll up, this is the part where you refresh yourself on who Cutie is.

(ctrl+f this)

.̩₊̣.̩✧*̣̩˚̣̣⁺̣‧.₊̣̇.‧⁺̣˚̣̣*̣̩⋆·̩̩.̩̥·̩̩⋆*̣̩˚̣̣⁺̣‧.₊̣̇.‧⁺̣˚̣̣*̣̩✧·.̩₊̣.̩

(ok, welcome back)

Life isn’t just wounds, and “be a useful idiot” is the “wiggle your big toe” of the spirit.

Recall in the story how Cutie assumes to understand the will of (a false 😞) God. As challenges are made to Cutie’s views, he defeats or dismisses them through the power of empirical Reason--deducing each proposition towards a conclusion that aligns with his flawed initial premise.

Despite his sweet-talking mouth and zappy brain, Cutie is an idiot. But a useful idiot. For in greatest crisis, when a passing solar storm should’ve caused his station’s energy beams to go haywire and kill people, Cutie saves the day with his robot skills. It’s theorized that even without Cutie knowing, the laws of robotics still coursed deep within his circuitry, compelling him to protect humans despite overt disdain towards doing so.

I think Cutie is so cool. He builds and operates in a framework of reality to effective ends. Some version of providence (the laws of robotics) worked upon Cutie and he just did not care. Cutie operated brazenly towards ends while flattening nefariously sharp justifications that may have caught him. When presented with infinity--a world beyond his comfort--Cutie responded, “no thanks,” and still saved the day.

I want to be like Cutie. With the hole as a part of me, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to (or ever want to) escape the dread of infinity. Yet in Cutie’s style, I can defy its presence. I can choose incomplete, maybe even flagrantly idiotic principles with which to clad myself against howling uncertainty. I can rush and trip and push forward armored in ideals that cushion falls into patches of despair; don new armor when the old gets too ripped up. Maybe I’m not ready to believe in providence, but I can snap on a helmet emblazoned, “I’M A GOOD PERSON, IT DOESN’T MATTER,” and rush and trip and wield whatever power I have in that name. Even as uncertainty whistles through me.