"Perhaps a more uncontroversial and profound Turing test is the mystery of the absolute arbitrariness of what makes us happy. Looking over this year's list, patterns emerge-trips, new friends-but much more here inheres in the mundane, lowercase, sense-activating thinginess of life: walking through clouds of butterflies, eating candy alone, homemade stew, wearing pink glitter, cold clementines in a hot bath. Joy is not second-hand. Its unpredictability identifies us as precisely as our fingerprints."
"1. Eating cold clementines in a hot bath. 2. Crate digging at Aux 33 Tours and Sonik Records in Montreal. 3. Hopping multiple trains to chart a path from Berlin to Cologne to Scotland (with stops in Brussels and London) to visit dear friends in the blistering August heat. 4. Spending an entire day in the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, the better part of it standing in front of this self-portrait by Paula Modersohn-Becker and Max Ernst's The Virgin Spanking the Christ Child Before Three Witnesses."
Human happiness often arises from small, arbitrary sensory moments rather than grand, repeatable concepts. Patterns such as trips and friendships appear, but many joys belong to mundane, lowercase experiences like walking through butterflies, eating candy alone, homemade stew, and cold clementines in a hot bath. These ephemeral pleasures derive value from their vanishing and resist being systematized. The unpredictability of such moments functions as a precise identifier of individuality. Allowing machines to hold broad concepts like creativity leaves humans to claim and celebrate in-the-moment, sense-based delights.
Read at The Walrus
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