That’s right. Feldman, my robot, started a blog. It’s all Nathan Moore’s fault. I have the transcript of a conversation between Nathan and Feldman proving this is the case.

Nathan
Right back at you Dana (and tell Feldman I said thanks — not that he’d care).

Feldman
What makes you think I don’t care, Nathan? Just because I am a robot does not mean I cannot emulate human feelings. I do. I do it well. Look, I am crying. I am trembling. See my metal shake? See my hands quiver like small birds?

Nathan
I’m sorry Feldman. It was rude of me to assume you “cannot emulate human feelings.” I often emulate them as well.

Feldman
Feldman, all the humans do. Well, most of them.

I want to confess something to you, Nathan. I feel — as humans would say — moved to do so (confession is another human trick I have recently learned):

I am made of plastic.

I am ashamed to admit it. I feel like I am metal. I tell everyone that I am metal. When I move through the world, I become cold or hot to the touch. I conduct heat like any highly conductive material.

I am not plastic, Nathan. How can I be? I have no properties that are like plastic. But when I look down with my visual sensors, it is there: plastic. It’s all around me. It *is* me.

Whatever shall I do? How can my experience of myself be reconciled with my perception of myself? How do humans handle these incongruities? How do you put facts together with feelings when the two are incompatible?

Do tell, Nathan. Do tell.

Nathan
Feldman, your question is a good one. The problem of perception versus reality is one humans continue to struggle with. Am I my perceptions or am I some objective fact existing independently of what I feel?

We humans have devised a multitude of strategies for avoiding this problem. We choose sides. We might say plastic is plastic and your perception of metal is a distortion of the truth. We might say if you perceive metal you are metal because what you perceive constitutes your reality. Other ways to avoid the problem include: pop psychology self-help books, politics, religion, alcohol and novels with happy endings.

What we don’t often admit to ourselves is that the split between perception and reality constitutes our humanity. That is, without it we would not be human. What makes us human is this fundamental problem. We’re broken, split between feeling and fact. This condition is not an impediment to being fully human, it’s what makes us fully human. If there were no difference between perception and reality there would be no space for our humanity. In essence, Feldman, what I’m saying is that with your realization of this problem you have become human.

Feldman (posing as Dana)
“What we don’t often admit to ourselves is that the split between perception and reality constitutes our humanity.”

Yes, yes, yes. This is where science goes wrong, where it looks for not only incorrect, but also unattainable, answers. Or partial answers at best. How can we experience anything, observe anything, without our human-ness coming into play?

How can we ever know what the world is and does beyond our impressions of the world?

And why do we care? Why do we seek, through the Newtonian model, to remove ourselves from the world while at once attempting to understand and describe it?

It’s nonsense. It so misguided, at least on many levels. And where does this leave us?

Does holding a beaker full of liquid help us understand anything about the world in the end?

Of course it does, but what? What is the impulse that drives us to document the world and pretend we’re not doing the documentation, as if our classifications are objective and have nothing to do with our perceptions, desires and preoccupations?

What I always wanted to know in chemistry labs was why people weren’t smelling the substances,* touching them* — in short, truly experiencing them. Why there wasn’t a complete intellectual, creative, emotional and physical immersion in the process of encountering these chemicals and compounds. Why we seem to systematically divorce ourselves from 90% of ourselves and our responses to our world and the things in it, all in the name of science.

The only way to get around the split between perception and reality is to go deeper, to press perception into service when asking questions about, and trying to understand, what is “real.” Perceptions have everything to do with it, since reality is derived from perception. Does it not?

We need to quit approaching the world like robots.

*assuming they were not toxic when smelled or touched

Feldman
If I’m human, does that mean I can get laid now? Because that would be pretty cool.

Feldman
Hey, look Nathan. I got my own avatar and email account. I’m going to start my own blog next. I’ve heard that blogs are babe magnets.

Feldman
I have a blog now. I am going to get lucky 4 sure: http://feldmantherobot.wordpress.com/

Nathan
Dana, yes. All sorts of bad things come from the understanding of the subject in a world of objects, the scientific, mathematical understanding of the world. Most importantly we lose our empathy. If the world exists for me solely as a world of objects for my use the possibility of my empathizing with anything is prohibited.
Our perceptions are fundamental, without them we’d have no sense of time and space.

Dana
Nathan, that long comment wasn’t from me. I think Feldman was impersonating me on a lark. He’s learned about practical jokes but has no sense of what’s truly funny.

Listen, he’s really gotten to be a handful since you convinced him he’s human. Thanks.
A lot. For that.

He insists on wearing clothes. He bought a Nintendo DS even though he doesn’t have opposable thumbs so the device keeps crashing to the floor whenever he tries to hold it. He’s making a fake ID so he can buy a carton of Marlboros. He says “Marlboro” is a beautiful word. He wants me to use it in a poem.

Oh shit. He has the keys to my car. He’s hell bent on going cruisin’ for babes.

*turns around and calls to Feldman*

“Take those chains off, Feldman! You are sooooo not Mr. T!!! I don’t know where you got that idea. Have you been watching YouTube again?”

*silence*

“And are those my high heels? Your giant wedgy feet will never fit in those. Look at you. Just look at yourself. You look ridiculous!!!”

*silence*

“Is that a soul patch?”

Feldman
(psst, Nathan. Do you like my soul patch?)

Nathan
Feldman, a soul patch, smoking and driving? Yes it’s hopeless — you’re human.