Explained Fiction: The Ride

An experiment involving a short piece of science fiction followed by some thoughts on the content.

Birdsong wakes Sam at the end of his sleep cycle. He feels well rested.

As he stirs, the birdsong fades out and the new sound coming from his bedside table is a trickling creek. He runs to the bathroom. When he returns, there’s some slightly upbeat, slightly metal music playing. He puts underwear on his 12 year old body then says “Bike park today, Jimmy?”

A perfectly natural, just broken male voice responds, “It’s been a couple of days. It would be great for your progress to go for an hour or two. We might try those medium jumps again.” 

Sam pulls on his riding shorts and shirt, whispering “repeated exposure” to himself. 

As he enters the kitchen he sees his dad at the bench having what Sam knows is his second cup of coffee, reading a book about economics. “Dad, can we go to the bike park this morning?” 

“Car’s already packed mate. I need practice too, apparently.”

Under Jimmy’s guidance, Sam makes breakfast with the perfect blend of protein and fat to have energy throughout the ride and pump the right nutrients into his growing muscles for recovery. Dad has a snack with a nutrient profile adjusted for age.

…………………………………

At the bike park they set up the camera. They’ve done it before, so they only need a little guidance. Buds go in, Sam goes first, buds go “Roll the first run.” 

He rolls over the jumps. As he’s riding back up and Dad’s rolling down, Jimmy says through his buds “Nice smooth start! This time, pump the first ones and pull up slightly on the two jumps.” 

Pedal, pedal, pump, pump, pre-load, pull up, air, push forward, land, roll, pull up, air, push forward, land, berm.

Each run he gets advice. There’s alway encouragement. There’s the occasional reminder that his timing is improving or his lines are getting better. The camera’s even good enough to pick up when he’s not pre-loading enough with his arms or pulling back on the pedals with his feet. 

They ride for an hour. 

…………………………………

“You’re tired.”

“How do you know?”

“You’re not putting as much into your pre-loading and it’s taking you ages to get back to the top.”

“Just a couple more.”

“You know you’re more likely to have an accident when you’re tired, but it’s good to push yourself. Your dad’s tired too.”

“Ask Kit to tell him two more runs.”

After a pause, Dad looks across at Sam and gives a thumbs up. Dad does look tired. 

Sam gets to the top of the run and exhales. He starts the run. Pedal, pedal, pump, pump, pre-load, pull up, air, push forward, land, roll, pull up, air, push forward, too far, brace for impact, impact. One of his buds falls out. In his other ear, Jimmy tells him he’s ok, that he doesn’t look hurt. Something hurts in his shin though. Dad rushes over, looking concerned, and ditches his bike, crouching beside Sam. “You hurt? What’s Jimmy saying?”

He sounds worried. Sam watches him look him over “Jimmy says I’m ok. But he would anyway, right, to stop me from panicking and making it worse? Right Dad?”

Sam looks his dad in his eyes.

“Yeah, look probably. I can’t see anything bad. Just a bit of blood”, Sam’s dad looks casual.

Dad doesn’t lie.

“What’s Kit saying?”, asks Sam.

“That you need to be kept calm. You seem calm. Can you try walking?”

Sam leans on his dad to stand up and tries putting weight on his sore leg. Seems fine. He jogs on the spot. 

“Call it?”

“Definitely. Good sesh. Want me to put your bike back in the car?”

“Yeah. Thanks.” 

Jimmy “Show us a pose so I can put it in your montage for socials.”

Sam does a happy shrug at the camera.

“Ice-cream on the way home?” says Dad.

Sam pauses to hear Jimmy’s thoughts.

“Should be fine”, he says.

“Kit’s telling me I shouldn’t.”

“Stuff him?”

“Stuff him.”

…………………………………

What is happening here?

A tiny story idea came to me and I wrote it down. The intention is to bring to life something which is close to being reality to see what I think of it. I might do this from time to time. I didn’t really edit it for style or try to make it an actual good story. Writing narratives is like guitar playing to me: it would be super cool to have the skill and I think people that are good at it are awesome, but I am not even close to thinking the time it would take me would be worth it because I just don’t enjoy it as much as those people do. 

Anyway, below are some of my thoughts on the ideas in the story. Let me know if you like this type of thing: the topic, the style, anything. 

Is this possible? 

I think if you really wanted to do this now, you could. I don’t really understand it, but there’s an API (application program interface, they link things like GPT4 to apps so it can use them) which links GPT4 to Siri. I don’t know how it actually works, but it’s feasible in my head that you ask Siri something, Siri feeds info about you and the day to GPT4 (because GPT4 has a bad memory) then asks it your question, GPT4 responds in Siri’s voice. GPT4 can have image input, so that part of the story works. Siri occasionally prompts GPT4 in the background with questions throughout the day and returns an answer if appropriate. 

Is this good?

I’d love to have some personalised pointers for things that I’m learning. I used the mountain bike example because I’m running a MTB club at school and I’m learning a lot from the kids, some of whom are excellent riders and teachers. I enjoy riding, and maybe if I had a pro coach (GPT4) to give me tips, I would go riding in my own time. So if it’s just a life coach who also reminds you to practise and is an expert in as many things as you want - mountain biking, nutrition, medicine - then maybe that’s fine. 

Outsource Thinking

How would it actually affect life? This technology would become an extension of yourself. Some scientists gave a chimp a rake and made it necessary to use it to get food, so the chimp became proficient with the rake. They looked at its brain and saw changes indicating the chimp didn’t distinguish between itself and the rake when the rake was in its hands. Humans are the same. When we use things a lot and become proficient, it changes our brains to consider them an extension of us. A builder with a drill. Most of us with a keyboard. Any tool we use a lot really, and which tool do we use the most? New Apple and Android phones train us to use touchscreens so well that we barely think about them. The Extended Mind WIki Link.

We’ve forever been outsourcing mental work in a limited way. The spouse in the 70s who doesn’t know anything about cooking and the spouse who knows nothing about cars. The distinction between metonymy and synecdoche which I looked up this morning and have already forgotten because I haven’t used it and I can look it up again if I really want to. Autocorrect allows us to make constant spelling errors, reinforcing them and reducing our ability to spell rather than showing them to us so we gain skill. Doing the easy, efficient thing rather than the harder, more effective thing. In The Glass Cage, Nicholas Carr details how active pilots now need to use simulations to know how to fly planes because they do so little of it in their jobs. There have been a bunch of crashes because the autopilot has failed and the pilot taking over had had so little practice. What if a much greater percentage of our processing and memory was outsourced? Again, some bits will be great or we wouldn’t be doing it, some bits will be bad and we won’t notice them, even after they’re gone.

If I don’t have to think about anything I don’t want to think about, in a way, that’s freedom. Maybe in the future my car will break down, I’ll show my virtual assistant under the bonnet while it connects to the car diagnostics wirelessly and it’ll tell me what to check, diagnose the problem, find a solution, find the nearest spare parts. Maybe Random Johnny is driving past the mechanic and his assistant tells him that he can stop for 15 seconds while Sally the mechanic passes him a spare fan belt, then another 15 seconds to drop it to me which is on his way to work anyway, and he gets $10. My assistant coaches me to install it. That’s efficient in terms of time and resources. (It doesn’t make sense because we’ll all be driving EVs which don’t have fan belts, and there probably won’t be mechanics, more like “technicians”.) That sounds great to me. I’ll never learn anything about cars, but I don’t want to.

The downside is clear: we will always have the choice of optimising for efficiency in the moment or long term learning, and we will always choose efficiency in the moment. We’ll tell ourselves a story that we’re learning something by planting peas on the day our assistant says to, in the way it says to, and we’re not totally wrong. But when we’re 80, we’ll still be asking the assistant. Or I would have an idea about this post and just ask GPT4 to write it and tweak it until it’s what I want. My ideas get written more efficiently and better, but I don’t learn the skill of writing. It’s that skill that in the long run would make my writing better than GPT4, even if I can’t do it now. More than that, if I become a proficient writer, I’ll be able to use GPT4 to create and edit even better bits of writing, really efficiently. But I’ll never see the downside, really. When you miss out on having an idea, you don’t notice it. Maybe I’m just a crotchety old man already. Maybe the new skill to be developed is how to ask GPT4 questions so it gives you what you want (I totally believe this will become a necessary skill for many jobs).

Socially

There are also social costs and benefits. You’re interacting less with the people around you. In the story, the dad isn’t coaching the kid, someone else is. They don’t seem to talk to each other much. Is that what would happen? Or would they interact more? Maybe Sam goes for a ride with his mates and shows his dad a bunch of the things they did, rather than just a “yeah, it was fun” when he gets home. It probably depends on the relationship. Based on the current reality of teens not seeing their siblings because everyone spends their time in their room, we probably end up down the dark road. Is this whole thing all that different from where we are now where teens hang out with each other by sitting on their phones and snapping the group chat rather than talking to each other. Reality is virtual, boomer.

It would always in theory be possible to say “Hey Assistant, no talking to us for an hour from when mealtime starts… unless it’s an emergency”. Or even a family could set goals for how much time they truly want to spend on social media, and the assistant could keep them to that. Instead of desperate parents handing screaming kids iPads, they would get the assistant to talk to them. Sounds a touch dystopian, but better than the current reality of kids addicted to screen dopamine by age 4.

 A smart GPT4 assistant would probably prompt mid-30s males with young kids to keep in touch with friends more - which they’re apparently terrible at. Scheduling meetups when travelling might be great. Instead of sending “I’ll be in Melbourne 5th to 10th…” it might just ask when you book flights if you want to meet up with certain people and they’re asked about specific times that might work.

I would love to hear anyone’s thoughts about how they use GPT4, how they would like to, ideas for what it might be like in a few years, whether they like the idea presented in the fiction, or anything else!