An Interesting Evening
- macdstu
- Sep 11, 2025
- 5 min read
So... an interesting evening.
Someone's at my window.
"Hey!"
"OH MY GOD, IT'S YOU!"
The badass art chick came back. With her cousin. The cousin is the same person that couldn't read the artist of a song on YouTube when she came over with another person.
I have a bit of vodka for guests.
And she has the most wild imagination.
"I'm gonna draw something. Real life, cartoon, or matrix?"
Me... real life or cartoon, she must be good. But what's matrix?
"Pixels. Like Pac-Man."
Wow... this is going to be amazing!
And finally she's finished. And she shows me the paper.
What... is going on here...
There's two scribbles in pen. One of them has a few extra shaded places and it kinda looks like a bit of a ladder. But you really can't see ANYTHING in these scribbles.
She starts describing the drawing.
What... are... you looking at? It's a scribble.
She starts describing the second one in great detail.
"Well, I guess it could be interpreted as two distorted heads coming together for a kiss."
"No, no, no... it's..."
"But... how? I don't understand what you're looking at here."
So I take the pen and I say to her "okay... how is that different than this?"
And it's kinda symmetric, looks maybe a bit like a suspension bridge.
"That's pixel too." Another elaborate story.
WHAT???
I show her a couple of Sevil's paintings.
She goes all over the painting describing in minute detail shading and colours with this story where you are asking the whole time "but where are you getting this from?"
"Let me tell you a story. When I was ten, I shot a grizzly bear."
WHAT?
"A 31-year-old grizzly bear. It was kind of skinny I guess."
I can't not laugh.
"What? It's true."
"You killed a 31-year old grizzly bear? When you were ten?"
"Yeah."
"How did you know it was exactly 31 years old?"
"Oh, some bear experts came in and created a system and taught us."
WHAT??
"Where were you?"
"At my grandfather's cabin."
"So you were at your grandfather's cabin when you were confronted by a skinny 31-year-old grizzly bear at ten years old, which you then shot?"
"Well it tried to bite me here. And here. And then I sort of hit it. I guess I sort of ended up wrestling it."
What is going on in your FAS mind, dear one?
Earlier she just kinda launched into this random story where the details all seemed to be disjointed and fantastical and it looked like she was in a trance and didn't have control of what she was saying.
"So can you always come up with original stories off the cuff, or do you know them well enough to repeat them?"
"What do you mean? They happened."
She doesn't know how to read. She only finished Grade 9.
But shouldn't she be in a Bachelor of Fine Arts program?
So she wants to leave.
I hold the door closed.
"But where are you going?"
"Away."
"Where? To your parents? Let me walk you to your parents. Stay here and let me get my jacket."
She leaves. I catch up with her.
"What are you doing? Where are you going? Where are you sleeping tonight?"
"GO AWAY!"
"I'm not going to leave you out here in the rain. I really like you. It's not safe out here. You can sleep on my mattress and I'll sleep on the floor."
She tries to get away. Ends up in the Roost.
They see her but not me. She's pointing at a figure emerging.
Freddy.
"What's wrong? Why are you crying? Who's there?"
I come around the corner and they see that it's me. A sigh of relief.
I explain.
She points at me.
"HE'S A RAPIST! HE RAPED A SIX-YEAR-OLD!"
Freddy's just staring at her.
He hands me a Roost bill with some hurried writing.
"This is your question. You have two weeks."
He filled up most of the page.
Elaborate. I like it. This man was really thinking.
There's a preamble. I can't really understand what he's getting at at first.
"What's this word?"
"Let me see. Oh... reality."
I get to the end.
Ahhh... the simulation question.
Freddy and the workers are taking her over to the table.
"Do you want some food?"
"Yes. Poutine."
He turns to me. "You can go now. We'll take care of her."
Normally, I would say no, I want to make sure she's safe tonight. But of course I trust those guys. Maybe someone in the community has a spare room or something.
If she had just come in by herself, I'm not sure what would have happened. They probably get a lot of drunken stragglers. They probably have seen her plenty. But because I was with her and they could see how much it seemed to mean to me that she was safe...
So I opened the door to leave but before stepping out into the rain, I looked down at the piece of paper.
"If you had to prove, without using faith, culture, assumptions that reality as you perceive it actually exists and then you yourself are not just a mind in a simulation or a dream, how would you do it?"
Hmmm...
I really like this guy.
Earlier in the day, I thought the challenge bothered him. I said to him "what about the question?" "Give me a little more time." "But you're trying to beat me... shouldn't you be asking the name of a destination you should go with your family so that when you come back in three weeks, you'll say to me 'that was the greatest three weeks of my life'?" (I was going to say Gokarna.) "No that is not my question. It's more like... if you went back to the day you were born, what would you change?"
"That's your question?"
"No that's not my question, but it will be something like that. Just a little more time."
"Interesting idea. I like it."
So... the simulation question.
I have some ideas I've already come up with.
But I have two weeks to think it through.
And I think to myself.
THIS famous question.
But to ultraneurodivergent ME.
"Should I tell him about the ecstatic seizures and the complete ridiculousness?"
And now...
A little later...
It comes to me.
"Freddy, I'm not going to answer your question in two weeks. Instead, I will come by every so often over the next two weeks and tell you something that will eventually allow you to answer the question for yourself."
So.
Schelling's plan.
The simulation statistical gamble.
Mohammed's life to mine.
The schizo-bipolar spectrum, Farwa's prison, the Hilbert Cube, and feeling like God.
The insane chamber.
The dice game.
The Olena Uutai story.
The importance of history. Kierkegaard's Ladder and Kierkegaard's Telephone.
Ibn Khaldun, Hegel, Karl Marx, and Fernand Braudel.
The steps to Mohammed, Ibn Tufail, Hegel and then Schopenhauer and Nietzsche.
Ten answers.
I'll go over to the Roost tomorrow and write the subjects on a bill.
No. One on each of ten bills. "Do you have a staple or a paper clip?"
"Give this to Freddy. This is his answer."
The look on his face...
Comments