Flamesplash's Journal: Freaky people

Today I get to study for and take a non-proctored mid-term for my AI course, and I thought that the best way to start things off would be to walk through the rain up to the Dunkin' Donuts and get some coffee.

So, I walk up there, get my coffee and decide to sit down and drink it there. I spied a table with a newspaper and hopefully went over to it. The tables around it were taken so I asked the gentlemen in the next table if anyone was sitting there. No one was, so I sat down and unfortunatly found that the paper was missing the comics section. Oh well.

While waiting for my coffee to get to a drinkable temperature the gentleman next to me asked if I wanted to buy a car. I told him no, and then he went on to tell me how he went in to get a tail light fixed and left with a broken motor, blown head gasket, ruined transmission and some other bad stuff. The people who fixed the light apparantly told him about something to fix an oil leak he had that screwed up everything else. I told him that it sucked and then he went into conspiracy theory mode.

To start with he seemed to think he was targeted in someway for some reason, maybe not him specifically but "some random person" to serve some higher goal. He then went on to talk about how everything is becoming easier and easier for us to do. Einstein spent years to come up with one formula and now adays we can do similar things much quicker with technology. And an example of this being that the government is capable of aiming a laser at any random person's head and recording all their thought and memories for later use. This was followed with the idea that anything "we" could think of "they" have done. I told him that actually humans were the bottleneck in the whole process. That we have these really neat tools, but we don't scale all that way and end up getting in our own way. He pretty much ignored anything I said contrary to what he was saying.

So, he continued this line of thinking with the ideas that some of the smartest people are living homeless under bridges. While I don't disagree that the proportion of genius's among the homeless is probably not that far off from the proportion of genius's in the general population, I don't agree with his continuation of the thought that the government ruined their lives so that they couldn't see their ideas become reality. Apparantly the government doesn't want things to happen too quickly so they make it so some of these genius's can't speed things along.

His next piece of wisdom was that in the next couple years we will all be able to live to the age of 130, but the government doesn't like this so they put things in peoples food and drinks, at this point he lifts his coffee cup as an example. This is apparantly the governments solution to shrinking social security.

At this point I just want to make it out without this guy asking me for help and following me home. Luckily, he finished his coffee and heads out.

This then reminded me of another encounter I had.

This person lives in my apartment complex and this interaction happened shortly after I moved in. I was sitting out on the grass, which is prohibited, and this lady walks by and starts talking to me. From what I can tell she is a little slow, I can't figure out why but she doesn't have the quickest thought process. She asked what I did and I told her I work at a DoD laboratory. At hearing this she immediatly starts telling me that she volunteers at an anti-nuclear organization, and doesn't believe in the use of any nuclear weapons. I sigh a little and tell her that I work for the Department of _DEFENSE_, and that we don't make weapons, and that in particular I have absolutly nothing to do with nuclear energy at all. She can't comprehend this and continues on how nuclear energy is bad. I listen, and eventually she goes on her way.

Paranoid? Naahhhh, not at all.

Edit: I removed some stuff that wasn't the main focus of the story and was being taken differently than I meant it. It wasn't that important.

Keep in mind...

[Iamthefallen]

Just because you are paranoid it doesn't mean they are not out to get you...

Re:Well, you're certainly better than everybody el

[Flamesplash]

I completely understand what you're saying. The question was there because I really didn't know. The few interactions I had had were unfavorable and I was hoping they were not typical. I really don't get out as much as I should. Thanks

Re:I am impressed

[Flamesplash]

It was simply my observation. I could have been completely wrong. It was just the idea I got from our interaction. The IQ part of the entry is not important, more so the idea of the average guy on the street.