How Did I Arrive in Hawaii?
A Brief Autobiography: Part 2

In trying to determine what went wrong in a complicated situation—with, say, an old school bus, international plans, and an inscrutable Mexican guide (for example)—it is sometimes helpful to look to metaphysics. In this case, the clarifying notion comes not from the German Enlightenment but from the other Western pinnacle: modern mathematics.

December 20, 2001, in Physical Review E, Volume 65, David H. Wolpert published a paper entitled ‘Computational Capabilities of Physical Systems.’ It was nothing special. Just like thirty or forty other math papers in the last hundred years, ‘Computational Capabilities of Physical Systems’ showed the inherent limits of predictive science—which are entire.

Can one build a computer that can “process information faster than the universe” he asks? The question is equivalent to asking, “Can one construct a theory in science which will definitively predict an outcome before a process occurs?” and the answer is no. The answer has been no for awhile now, possibly since 1931. Physicists and philosophers pay no mind.

Wolpert proves the usual kinds of things. What if the computer/theory were infinitely dense and infinitely fast? No. What if we reverted back to classical mechanics? No. What if we used quantum computing? No. The relevant point for this autobiography is:

…the unpredictability results also establish that no computer can infallibly predict the past (i.e., perform retrodiction). So any memory system must be fallible, i.e. the second law of thermodynamics cannot be used to ensure a perfectly faultless memory of the past.

Why didn’t my estimable companion Andrès and I cross the Mexican-American border with a school bus full of musical instruments and recording equipment for a year-long jaunt through the Spanish speaking land?

I will never know. Already the world lines have begun to dissipate.

My apartment lease ended, the bus broke down, and I was propelled into a grim future time. It was January 2008. I was living on my friend’s couch in Berkeley, CA. It was rainy season and my back hurt. Nietzsche lay discarded under the remnants of my possessions—some dirty clothes, an old hat, my laptop. I was lovesick, and reading was impossible. Every time I found a quiet place to read in, it felt too quiet and all I could think about was decay and loneliness.

At night, my friend’s neurotic vegan roommate would sit up all night in the living room, laughing nervously to herself and drawing under a harsh fluorescent light bulb. She drew the same image in many forms. She was unconsciously obsessed with The Maiden and The Beast. Sometimes the maiden would be reclining dramatically in medieval garb. Sometimes she would be a child. The monster was menacing in some drawings, Shrek-like in others. Sometimes she gave them fantastical backdrops, sometimes they were stark portraits.

It seemed likely that I would never escape Berkeley. I would never even make it across the Bay to San Francisco. It was too late for me, I was one of them now. A psychic vampire master lives in the old sewer system underneath Telegraph Avenue. Every time you walk down it he sucks out some of your reason and optimism and replaces it with Paranoia. Eventually you are supernaturally bonded as his minion and incorporated into his foul psychic web.

One of his minions, Sunshine, almost did me in. Sunshine was a fat tweaker who would sit on the corner and whine at the top of her lungs about how life was unfair and she wanted money. If you gave her food instead of money, she would throw it in your face. One day my friends were walking to my old apartment and they saw Sunshine by the parking garage. She was standing on one foot hitting her crack pipe while another tweaker sucked her toes. She couldn’t stop laughing. From that story on, no street was safe.

Fortunately for my soul, I had long ago cultivated the habit of spontaneously purchasing plane tickets and running away from unpleasant things. Sometimes intense randomness can be the only safety net. Once when I was lovesick in college, I bought a ticket to New York and left the next day. Another time in Berkeley, when I found myself entangled with a manic depressive drug dealing nut, I bought a ticket to Boston. I told the nut, who had moved onto my floor, that I was leaving for True Love, and that this Love had to be acted on pronto.

This time I decided I would fly to Hawaii. Still in the grip of psychosis, it at first seemed necessary to find a traveling companion. I picked up Jeff from Telegraph Avenue. He had been diagnosed as schizophrenic, bi-polar, dyslexic, and ADD, and been fed drugs as a child. He was free to travel and I hired him on the spot.

But fatefully, after we hitchhiked up to Humboldt, he was arrested for a narcotics warrant. Enraged-and-thus-inspired, I bought some rope, tied my possessions to me, and flew to Maui without him.

And so, I was saved.

(go to Part 1)

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