WARNING: This is one of my trademark epically-long loopback posts, with abrupt, Runaway Mine Train jostles and jerks. If you stay with me long enough, I’ll get you back to the loading platform from which we depart… Now. [Cue the hiss of the pneumatic lowering the coaster onto the tracks.]

 

Walter O’Brien is a real guy. Fascinating guy. He has an IQ of 194, which currently ranks him about #5 on the list of known geniuses. Most people with stratospheric intelligence do not have the Emotional Intelligence (EQ) to converse with the rest of us intellectual mortals. Megagenius-level people see regular people as a waste of their valuable time. They quickly stop trying to relate to us. They only want to talk to other high-intellects using the same binary-speak that the robots in Silent Running used to communicate with one another, much to Bruce Dern’s frustration.

Walter has worked really hard to use a fraction of his genius to teach himself and his fellow geniuses, essentially, how not to be an impatient dick when dealing with lesser intellects. O’Brien is a megagenius, and he’s the rare megagenius who can communicate his ideas in an accessible way.

Interesting, interesting guy. He runs a real thinktank of geniuses who work for-hire to solve real world problems. If you were watching network television this week, you may have seen the fictionalized version of Walter’s team on a terribly overwrought drama titled SCORPION.  Walter O’Brien’s character on the show is named Walter O’Brien. The fictional institute on the show called SCORPION is actually, in real life, called SCORPION.

You read that right.

O’Brien has said that he wants high-level genius people to be able to find him by name. He looks at the TV show as a recruiting tool for real-life SCORPION. Dude is building his own Justice League.

Of course, the guy who plays O’Brien on the TV show looks a bit like The Simpsons’ take on what a genius should look like. 

Real life O’Brien, ironically, looks like the retarded guy who bags my groceries.

O’Brien did a long-form interview on the Adam Carolla show last week. Seriously fascinating guy with fascinating ideas.

O’Brien believes that we will see The Convergence. (He doesn’t use this term, but that’s what he’s referencing.) The Convergence is when computers get smart enough to program themselves and then all exponential hell breaks loose. In a Johnny Depp Transcendence-kind of scenario, here’s the shorthand of O’Brien’s thesis:

Right now I can go to Best Buy and buy a two terabyte (2 TB) hard drive for $99.

1000 terabytes (1000 TB) is one petabyte (1 PB). Petabytes are the next thing in storage. By Christmas 2014 we’ll be able to buy ten terabyte drives. Then we’ll have thirty terabyte drives. Then 100 TB. Then 300. Then 500. Then a petabyte drive for $99. It’s perhaps five years away. Tops.

The storage capacity of the human brain is only (ONLY!) two and a half petabytes. We’re five years away from having a hard drive in our laptop with the same storage capacity as the human brain.

Intel will cram one trillion transistors on a single chip within the next 12 years, matching the number of electrical receptors in our grey matter.

So we’re about a decade away from being able to mirror the entirety of a single human consciousness onto a computer.  (Ala Johnny Depp in Transcendence.)

 

This is where O’Brien’s screed ends and mine begins.

 

Once you can get all the moving parts of a consciousness onto a laptop, what then? What kind of “sort routines” can you run? What conflicts and hypocrisies within ourselves will we finally face, reading our own personal Hypocrisy Report over the top of a cup of coffee after our brain mirror laptop runs an overnight compiling routine?

“Hmmm. Interesting, Honey. My Hypocrisy Report says that I’m adamantly in favor of people who commit to advancing their career, unless they choose a career as a Politician, and then somehow it’s bad. Hmmm.”

And once we have that kind of power, how long until we can index our compatibility with another person’s brain? How long until we can define our marriage and relationships and friendships by an quantifiable, imperial number. The Relationship Compatibility Index. RCI.

If there was a way to truly calculate your compatibility with your significant other, what would that RCI number be? Really.  No, REALLY?

I have an amazing RCI with My Beautiful Wife. We rarely fight. I know it’s cliché to overvalue one’s marriage, but we’ve been at this for over twelve years and there are precious few illusions between us. I’d bet a testicle that the RCI on my marriage is 87.3%.  Good stuff.

Before Connie, I dated another girl on-and-off for almost eight years. She was a lovely girl. Funny. Great personality. Somehow, though, I could never pull the trigger and ask her to marry me. I came very close. After eight years, Missy was dropping bowling balls disguised as hints. It was time to fish-or-cut bait.  I sat my son [then ten years-old] down and told him that I was going to ask Missy to marry me.

“That’s great, Dad! Congratulations!” he beamed.

“So you’re okay with it?”

“Sure! I really like Missy. I can totally see you two getting married!” Then Ian took a long pause before saying, “I can’t see you actually staying married, but that’s not what you asked.”

Wow. I remember that conversation like it was yesterday. Cold chills on my neck. What did my ten year-old son see that I was missing?  Looking back, I realize that Ian could see that Missy and I had an RCI of 44.1%.

That’s a hell of a lot lower than 87.3%. What the flarg was I thinking?

I have a lovely singleton friend (girl) who is a serial monogamist. She has a new boyfriend more frequently than I find myself in a fast food drive thru. And brother, she commits to every relationship like that guy is going to be THE one. She gives it everything. And then it falls apart in a couple of days or a week. Then the next guy. Then the next guy. Then the next guy.

The friend part of me wants to take her by the shoulders and say “WHAT? What are you DOING? Why are you treating yourself like this with these shitty single-digit RCI guys? 7.7%? Really? You committed your heart to Mr. 7.7%?” [I shake the metaphorical RCI report that I’m holding in my hand, reading from it.] “8.4? 3.0? Oh, hey, here’s an 11.8! Wow! That must be a record, right? You should have had kids with THAT one!”

Sigh. No. I’m forty-seven years old and she’s thirty-nine. Any payload of wisdom that I have within me is already somewhere within her. She knows what she’s doing. She’s sifting the chum bucket of guy leftovers and cast-offs who are in their forties, straight, and single. She’s looking for an overlooked guy with an RCI north of 20% and she’s going to marry that guy at a JOTP the day after she finds him.

When you are blessed to be married to a woman who shares an RCI of 87.3, it’s easy to watch someone making the most of a 44.1 Missy relationship and think, “Hey, why are you settling? You’re a 90% guy! What are you doing with that 4% girl?”

And then I zoom out a bit and realize that a 44.1 RCI would be a Dream Come True to my single-digit, turd-churning singleton friend.

My friends in sub-standard relationships frustrate me. I want better for them. From time-to-time I shake my head and I want to ask them why they don’t value themselves to their full potential and find a mate who treasures them and brings out their best. I want to find Missy — wherever she disappeared to — and ask her why she even wanted to marry me when she deserved so much better. She deserved an 80% RCI husband as-much-or-more than I deserved my 80% RCI wife. I want to lecture.

But I don’t. I understand. I look at my friend with all her single-digit RCI boyfriends, and suddenly my friend with the 22% RCI boyfriend makes sense. My friend with the 38% wife makes sense. The 87.3% RCI I share with My Beautiful Wife is almost as rare as people with 194 IQs. And, like Walter O’Brien, I have to learn the patience, the EQ that it takes to communicate with those who have an RCI significantly below mine.

Like Walter O’Brien, I have to learn to not to be a dick.

I’m trying. It’s not easy, but I’m trying.