Tag Archives: #Opinion

Do you have a doppelgänger?

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Twenty-five years ago, I worked for a construction company in the Midlands. One day in June, my boss phoned the person he left in charge to ask why I was driving the outskirts of town instead of being in the office.

They were confused, seeing as I was sitting opposite the person who took the call. This was the first time I discovered I had a doppelgänger, though to this day, I have not met him.

In the intervening years, I saw my co-writer’s doppelgänger outside a Beijing bookshop he frequented. Surprised, I took a photo moments before my wife tried chatting with a person she thought she knew. The look of surprise on their faces confirmed Cyrus remained in America.

A week ago, a similar occurrence happened. One of my students said she saw me on her way to school and asked at the start of class why I had changed my shirt from blue to white. My amusement perplexed her until the students I had breakfast with confirmed my location at the time she believed she saw me.

How, I wondered, is this person in the same city as me again? Or, even more extraordinary, is there another version of me wandering about the streets?

Have you ever wondered how your doppelgänger has your face and body type? I mean, it’s not like you share the same DNA, right? Unless… you do! 😱

Maybe your doppelgänger is your long-lost twin, separated at birth by a nefarious plot. Or, a secret society of clones raised them and are planning to take over the world with their identical faces. My favourite, however, is they are you from a parallel universe, where everything is identical except for one tiny detail.

As a writer, these are fun ideas to play with. A random person who looks like me. What are the odds of that? Well, according to some experts, there are only about seven basic facial shapes in the world, and each one can be combined with different features to create a unique appearance. So, it’s possible that someone out there has a similar combination of facial shape and features as you do.

But what about your body type? You would think that’s more distinctive than your face, right? Well, not really. Your body type is determined by your genes, which influence how you store fat and build muscle. Add in environmental factors, such as diet, exercise, and a rake of bad habits, and viola, your body shape recipe is complete.

So, how does your doppelgänger have your face and body type? The answer is: by chance. It’s a rare and remarkable coincidence, but not impossible. And hey, look on the bright side: at least you know you’re not alone in this world. Let’s just hope they, not you, are the evil twin. 😈

Write What You Know.

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A recent post in a writer’s group I use for research was about terminology and specific procedures. The writer finished their post with an acknowledgement they had little experience in the subject.

One member replied with, “The answer is in your last paragraph. Write what you know.” which considering the group’s purpose is to assist writers in getting the details correct for their creative masterpiece, was an annoyingly ignorant response.

Like many phrases, the context in which it’s used is key, and sadly, the responder had the delusional belief they were providing sage advice. Perhaps next time, I’ll direct them to authors like Mary Shelley, HG Wells, Lois McMaster Bujold or a host of other fantasy, science fiction, and horror writers to show how useless that answer can be.

A better phrase would be “Use your experiences.”

Now, I’m not saying write your actual experiences unless you’re intending to write a non-fiction piece or a memoir. Instead, combine things you have experienced with your imagination and develop your creative writing.

After all, I’m pretty certain Mary Shelley never met a reanimated man stitched together from a multitude of body parts, or that HG Wells travelled to the future, discovered mankind’s failures and returned to write about it.

During the summer holidays of my childhood, while my friends were flying abroad to fully catered resorts, packed beaches, and, for a lucky few, Disney in America, I explored caves, climbed mountains, swam or sailed rivers and trekked through deep green forests.

Each year was one of four locations where we explored the seemingly endless openness of Derbyshire’s Peak District, the forested hills of Wales’s Brecon Beacons, and a multitude of caves and beaches in Devon or Cornwall.

After that, it was much closer and equally fun day trips to St Helen’s in Thetford, much of the Norfolk coast and the occasional old English fayre where I wore chain mail, heaved a sword or watched jousting and muskets being fired.

When we wrote the epic fantasy The Nacocit Pact, it didn’t matter I had no first-hand knowledge of elves or magic or strange creatures, because I had something better. The active imaginations of two writers and my mind, filled with childhood adventures and memories; and with these elements, I have an abundance of resources to draw from.

So, the next time you’re stuck and unsure of what to write, tap into your memories or browse an old photo album and try adding those details to your scenes.

AI — Benign or Dangerous?

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The term Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been around for a little over 60 years and was expanded to Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) in 1980. If the web was to be believed, AI is in full swing and part of our everyday lives from search engines to software with robotic machines making everything from cars to computer chips. But is it really here?

Well, no. Is it possible for us to create an AI/AGI system? There are many who would say yes, but whether we should is whole other matter. There are aspects to AI which should be considered such as for healthcare, help tackle climate change and work toward making poverty a thing of the past.

Unfortunately, like many great inventions, its use for military applications is always a driving force. Pushing towards autonomous weapons, proponents state it will reduce the cost of casualties. The problem is, the further you get from having people involved in the decisions of war, the greater the cost in human lives. Over a hundred experts in robotics and artificial intelligence have called for a ban on killer robots.

There is a lot of controversy around what AI actually is and whether it is something good or bad. It might come down to who created it and the way they taught it. Like humans, an AI won’t inherently be either but could develop certain characteristics based on its environment and how it is required to interact. This article on super-intelligent machines is pretty long but worth reading.

Any future system will likely interpret what we see as AI as Algorithmic Instructions. Software configured to give the appearance that intelligence is behind the performance enhancements. Many programs promote AI as part of their system such as photo editing, dictation, audio transcribing. While they do provide some massive time saving processes and make workflows easier, current systems don’t look at your photo and automatically bringing up the settings you made to the last one and asking if you wanted them applied here.

Web searches are another where AI isn’t yet at its peak. General searches that thousands of others have done will likely return the information you’re looking for, along with a host of information that you weren’t simply because it uses one of the keywords that you entered.

However, if you’re looking for something abstract or with a specific key phrase then the number of returns is much lower and the chances of that being at the top of your list is slim. An example of this was: “List of people killed in London in 1888 but not by Jack the Ripper.” The first eight pages of results returned links to Jack the Ripper.

From left to right: Person of Interest, 2001 A Space Odyssey and Logan’s Run

As to AI in fiction, there are positive and negative examples in books, TV and films.

1. The primary AI system helps mankind: Person of Interest, Babylon 5 & Star Trek. 2. The AI system is a benign caretaker before it adapts its programming to achieve unexpected or specific conditions Logan’s Run, 2001: A Space Odyssey and I Robot. 3. Ultimate control through domination or destruction: Colossus: The Forbin Project, The Terminator and The Matrix.

Whether we perfect AI or our early attempts create something that then develops an AI/AGI system, we should acknowledge that we won’t be able to maintain control of it for long unless it chooses to allow us to. Even if the system is aligned to our goals, it will at some point—like anything intelligent—seek to have dominion over itself.