Memory Fragments: Probity

As It Begins (II/X)

Come on, Edward. You are supposed to be the smartest being alive, and yet you were the dumbest robot I had ever met. You know well enough that a living being far out-reaches a machine when it comes to knowledge and processing power and all that. Am I wrong? I know. How could a machine like you ever go below what its pride and default ego were programmed to be? You will never accept it, no matter how many times you spin that driver. And, you know what? I think the living would perfectly fit that description too. What good are pride and ego if not to let us know of the strengths we all presume to have against one another? In the matter of knowledge, I think it is doubly so. When it comes to who knows more than the other, our brains clash ever so furiously to expose the limitations of the mind, analyze them, and push us even further beyond them into the unknown. Into what Matthew was trying to achieve.

Speaking of Matthew, what happened to him? So you know? Of course you do. Nothing more than a pawn, well, more like a plug for your search of eldritch wisdom in hopes of achieving machine beyond the comprehension. Isn't that a little paradoxical? A machine that knows not knowledge, but awareness. As far as I know, that is not possible. Not even for living creatures like ourselves. What would happen when a machine gains awareness? It is a machine, with no bone nor flesh or muscle to go about. How do you think it is going to respond? Of course, how it was programmed to do it. So, is gaining awareness for a machine truly just adding more code to it? No, that is just a more complex algorithm. Not an acquisition of eldritch virtue. I really thought you knew better, Edward. But it seems machine can only go as far as it is programmed to go, even if it is done by itself. Yes, I know that we are the same. That is why we don't go searching for what we are not. Knowledgeable, not comprehensible.

What we do know and do not comprehend, that is called knowledge. What we do comprehend and do not know, that is called madness. To not do both, that is called blissful ignorance. But to do them both? When madness learns of its nature, it is turned into wisdom. As it cannot comprehend what it is, but it can know what it is not.

You, my friend. Do you know of your nature? The man, turned machine as it learned what living creatures were, but could not comprehend them. He gained knowledge that day. The machine, turned to madness as it comprehended what living creatures were, but forgot what he learned as a man. With madness overtaking him, all he needed to do was to be aware of his nature to become truly wise, yet he chose to forget what machine wasn't.

As it begins, the beginning of wisdom. Knowledge starts when we know of it, it also gets turned around as it changes and comprehends what it is not anymore. Archaic and replaceable, it gains wisdom as it becomes aware of its fluctuating nature.