When I was six or seven I had the idea that the world was a movie that God created to entertain the Baby Jesus. I guess I’d found those stories they told in Sunday school so entertaining that I figure the Baby Jesus enjoyed them as well. A year or three later I had an idea which I described this way in a rather long and complicated article about the Self:
When I was seven or eight I was given a toy which we can call the COSMIC RAY GUN – I forget the real name. It had the shape of a pistol, but it didn't shoot toy bullets or even make toy noises. Rather, it was a device for projecting short film-loops on the wall. Each time you pulled the trigger it would advance the film one frame. This toy came in a box and the box cover had some lettering which proclaimed the toy's name, COSMIC RAY GUN, a picture of the toy itself, and a picture of a boy holding a box. The boy's box had some (somewhat smaller) lettering, COSMIC RAY GUN, a (somewhat smaller) picture of the toy itself, and a (somewhat smaller) picture of a boy holding the box. This regress went as far as the resolution of the image would allow, but I was just clever enough to be able to imagine it going on and on and on without discernible end. That is to say, my brain was somehow able to imagine that each representation could itself become the object of a representation.
Last night I presented that paragraph to ChatGPT along with a request for it to draw a picture of the box. I then spent the next 45 minutes or so having it draw the same image in various styles. Here’s some of my favorites.
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