Almost achieved Satori

There I was, finishing programming problem that had eluded me for quite some time, when I took a moment to step back and examine my work. I took a deep breath and looked at it. But then something strange happened while I thought. It seemed as if my mind was expanding. My field of view embiggened until this particular program was just one part of the larger picture. It was no problem I had solved, it was an old friend I had invited over for drinks and wise advice. We talked about our troubles and parted on good terms, both better for having met. I could feel the computation coursing through my veins until it seemed I was floating in a vast ocean of solutions, and all I needed to do to know all was let it pass inside me. It was right there and all I had to do was inhale and let the universe fill me and make me pure.

But then, it was over, the moment was gone and I couldn't find it again. I was at my desk, staring at a mediocre solution to a tedious and annoying problem.

Satori isn't real.

>>2
It is, I felt it. Maybe it us you who isn't real.

>>2
Nice temporal trips.

Keep working at it. Try a few exercises from SICP, Satori Edition.

>>1
Yeah, you get the same feeling when you have created an artificial Mind, as http://ai.neocities.org/mentifex_faq.html describes. You feel that your mind, which was created in the image and likeness of God, is using its godlike powers to pass the miracle of creation on down through a concatenation of ever more powerful AI Minds. But then you get brought back down to Earth when you meet someone like I did yesterday who needs a job but lacks a green card and wants to live in these USA but lacks citizenship. What's a netgod to do? I feel like offering her $20 or $30 an hour to teach me Mandarin.

>>6

teach me Mandarin

She's a Zerg subhuman, she should go back to China instead of polluting other countries with her genes.

>>7
Ten years ago I was teaching Latin and Greek for free to a blonde American beauty who had switched from psychology to Classics and was flunking out. One day we sat studying in the Eigerwand Kaffeehaus from 11:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. -- nine hours straight -- NO INTERRUPTIONS -- and they still talk about her at the Eigerwand: "Do you want that tunafish sandwich with one pickle, or two?" Now I am so desperate for la companie feminine that I want to rush in and save the sweet-natured beauty from having to back to the country when they kill their own students for requestng democracy at Tienanmen Square. U.S. companies like Apple who do business with the illegitimate Chinese government share the guilt of gunning down hundreds of Chinese students. Boycott Apple until Apple stops doing business with the murderous Chinese government!

>>8
So some chink whore is using you to get a green card. That's cool, I guess, but don't ask me to join your faux pas political boycott thing that you didn't give half a shit about until Lin Chan gave you a panty shot.

>>8

U.S. companies like Apple who do business with the illegitimate Chinese government

LOL half the US goods are manufactured in China, China is the official manufacturing colony of the US, no matter what the politicians say.

>>10
Well, not to get too autistic, but... if the politicians don't say it, then it is not the policy of the high government offices, then it is not official.

>>8
Why would you care about "hundreds" of Chinese students anyway? The Chinese population is over 1.5 billion now. With a population density like that, your students back in 1900 don't even matter.

>>12 Excellent point, Chairman Meow.

>>6,8
This is a first for me. Mentishit looks so cute when he's in love.

After I post >>6 and >>7 above, I go to a coffee shop and start reading my big fat Sunday New York Times. On the front page of the Sunday Business section and page 5 inside, there is a big whole-page article about my old boss Dr. Mansour Samadpour from twenty years ago, when he was running a book store apart from his university microbiology lab. When I showed him my publication on artificial intelligence in NOVEMBER Magazine, Mansour snorted, "This is not science." So I told him it is philosophy, not science. I let him have my German copy of Mein Kampf to display in the front window, but some customers got terribly upset. Three monthis after I quit working there, I walked by the front window and saw beautiful brown hair streaming down the backside of a Latina beauty, so I went in and was introduced to "Odna Mona" as described in http://www.churchofvirus.org/virus.96/1998.html on the Web. When Odna and I met, it was like in Collossus: The Forbin Project, where the U.S. superintelligence and the Russian superintelligence start rapidfire intercontinental communications. My coworker told me not to talk about such personal things with Odna Mona, then my coworker looked rapidly back and forth between Odna and me as we both raced into the most personal of all topics and questions. Soon I became Odna's German tutor, and she took me to a German movie at the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF), where she moonlighted as an usher. Then our boss Mansour started making snide remarks. He said that he could take Odna Mona home in his car, while Arthur could take Odna Mona home on his bicycle. It was bad enough when his voice used to come booming over my radio at four o'clock in the morning, talking about E-coli food safety. Now in the NYT of 5.APR.2015 I read that he started his new company with six employees in 2001 and it "now employs over 1,500 people at 116 labs in the United States and Europe." Why does The New York Times leave out the fact that the guy was the bookstore boss of Mentifex from 2001 to 2005?

>>15
CORRECTION: bookstore boss of Mentifex from 1991 to 1995

>>15
Oh, I forgot to mention. On or about 28 November 2002, Odna Mona and I went to a movie starring Salma Hayek about the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. Then we were waiting for a bus to take us downtown to the Frida Kahlo exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum, and Odna Mona made me sit down for a photograph after she wrote "Arthur is a liar" in chalk on the concrete bench. That photograph is now my Amazon author photo at
http://www.amazon.com/Arthur-T.-Murray/e/B004OKWAM8 on the Web.

>>15
Yeah, why would they leave that out? That must be a conspiracy to try to keep you and ANDRU out of the news so the goyim don't know the secrets of the universe.

^{_{I don't even know if I should feel guilty for encouraging him.}}

Then somebody stole the Amazon photo and used it for a fake "Mentifex" twitter account.

>>15

Mansour snorted, "This is not science."

Damn right.

I let him have my German copy of Mein Kampf to display in the front window, but some customers got terribly upset.

I laughed.

>>15
Yeah, being the boss of Mentifex briefly is far more worth mentioning than the fact that his business has grown 250 times its original size.

Also do you fall in love with every girl you see?
How were you with women when you weren't old?

>>21
> Also do you fall in love with every girl you see?
Sure, why not? Fer instance, a week ago there was an incredible petite beauty sitting on the bus when I got on. Lustrous brown hair glowing in the sunlight, luscious red lips, shapely gymnastic body. I was afraid to ask too tritely, "Where does this bus go?" Then a black blind lady got on and kept asking the driver if he would stop at "X" Street for her and her seeing-eye dog. After a while I spoke up and told the blind lady that I would try to remember for her when we reached "X" Street. Then I got a bright idea. I said to the petite beauty, "Excuse me, miss. Would you please help me remind the lady to get off at "X" Street?"
"I'm sorry, but I get off at the stop before 'X' Street."
"Do you speak Russian?" I say, because I can always tell either a Russian or a German accent. Yes, she did.
"Я говорю по-русски," I say, which is, "I speak Russian." And she has been here six years, first studying English, then something like sociology.
"Где вы жили в Росии?" which is, "Where did you live in Russia?", but she did not live in Russia, she lived in Uzbekistan. We had a very pleasant but brief conversation until she had to disembark. And these encounters, Prog-riders if not bus-riders, happen over and over again. It is our duty as he-men to make the first move and let the sweethearts either reject us or accept us. As the Roman poet Ovid wrote two thousand years ago in The Art of Love, "Spectatum veniunt; veniunt spectentur ut ipsae", or, "They come to watch; they come so that they themselves may be watched."
> How were you with women when you weren't old?
I was young and stupid and did not even realize when maidens were making a play for me. Now I am old and useless but having more brief, intense romances than ever. Suddenly last summer, fer instance. On 29 June 2014 I told lifeguard Malibu that they call me Crawdad Man and I find lost valuables in the lake. When I went there a month later, lifeguard Malibu handed me a list of names and phone numbers for people whose eyeglasses she wanted me to find at the bottom of the lake. I found three of the four eyeglasses, twenty pairs of goggles, ten face-masks, one Samsung Galaxy smartphone, and a big Sterling silver ring that I gave to the snorkling barista at the Eigerwand (but that's another story :-) and because I adjusted my travel schedule I had a month-long romance with Kirei-na from Tokyo.
She asked if she could take a picture of her and me at one of the bus-stops. She said, "I have a boyfriend in Tokyo, but we are fighting." So take heart, young prog-rammers. You do not know how to deal with the ladies now, and you never really will, but you can have sweet sublime experiences as you age and mature. Remember, men become more distinguished and appealing as they age. Signing off, old useless Mentifex.

>>22
Rather inspirational

>>22
Thanks for this post Arthur