Meet the New Boss. Same as the Old Boss.
—Our Father, Who Art in…
But father‘s out of style, isn’t it? They call you The Admin now. The Board. Creation was a group project. I don’t know how they know that, but apparently there are a lot of you. Maybe I should call you Odin, or Thor. Or—Loki, given the way things are falling apart down here.
I always thought of you as the Heavenly Father, and all this time I’ve been praying to a committee.
This should feel different. It’s not faith any more, after all. It’s science. It’s, it’s evidence-based as they like to say. Before, I could just talk to you; it never occurred to me to wonder how you’d hear my small voice out of all these billions. I think maybe part of me was hoping you wouldn’t.
But now there’s a mechanism. We’re all just numbers now, that’s all we’ve ever been. These thoughts in my head are just math and state variables and logic gates. If that’s true — and what kind of flat-earther would deny it, after five years of merciless confirmation? — then the model can be frozen between one tick of the system clock and the next. The whole universe could have stopped dead a split-second ago, you could have poked around to your heart’s content. In the space between one breath and the next, you could have read every thought sparking in every creature in the universe.
Maybe you plot my soul on some kind of graph, shame on one axis, remorse on another. Maybe you can see every x about to tip over into y. You know what my next thought is going to be, and the thought after. Math is deterministic, after all. And when you’ve seen enough, you can just — start the cosmos up again and wander off for a coffee, and you don’t even have to hang around to hear the rest of this prayer because you already know how it’s going to end.
I don’t care what they call it these days: Handshaking Protocols, NPCUI, OSping, Divinity dialup. It’s still just prayer. I know that, because it feels the same as it always did. Even if nothing else does.
It feels like no one’s listening.
Great. An up-and-coming! I’m all caught up, to Contracting Iris, and Defective (with the exceptions of ‘Defining an Elephant’ an ‘Insect Gods’), even got “The Wisdom of Crowds”. Although you said a few months ago that you had some stories released recently, but only in “obscure European publications” or something. Any titles or locations for those?
“Prompt Injection” just came out within the past month, I think. In a videogame-culture-themed German volume called “Worldbuilding” (although I see it’s also coming out in an English edition in August, with a much more cluttered cover.
Also let’s not forget about my nonfiction stuff. I put out three of those in just the past year. Busy little Squid over here…
Thanks! I’ll look out for that. I’m struggling to find a non-fiction bibliography for you, unless there’s one on this site somewhere. I’ll happily read them, if I ever manage to finish “Being No One”. 🙂
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, eh?
Wait, what is this? I’m sorry what is a “fiblet”?
“Fiction niblet”. A bit or a piece of something I’m working on.
Select “Fiblets” under Subjects in the side bar and you’ll find a lot of them.
I always like the fact that Fiblet works as a pun too – since fiction writing is essentially making things up (lies if you look at it another way).
Which is why Stross has the line “Hi. I’m Charlie Stross, and I tell lies for money” in his Bio.
Short lies (little fictions) would be Fib-lets. Makes me smile every time I see it.
I really like your method of using vampires, magic, and religious rituals as metaphors for scientific processes.
Even after we have driven out all superstitions through science, they should survive as a source of cool naming and metaphors. They are very attractive.
The only one to have ever listened is you. And that is sufficient. Speaking, like writing, clarifies.
New short story collection incoming? Love this
I was told there was obscure new product but not provided with delicious links! Where are my shirt stories at, bill me daddy
Not relating to this post, but I recently re-read ‘Blindsight’ and made some observations you might consider interesting.
– Cats always looking to lie down on square things, be it folded clothes or just a “pen” drawn on the floor with scotch tape, are perhaps experiencing something like the vampire’s cruciform glitch. That they tend to lie down on the most important thing that’s around is probably a related, but not causally linked phenomena.
– I always had trouble with the scene where the crew of the Theseus makes first contact and they start figuring out that Rorschach is a Chinese room, mainly because I’ve never really bought Searle’s argument. Something that can produce language appropriate to context — if clumsily — must be using language intentionally, I thought. To *understand* language is to use it appropriately (Wittgenstein). Well, the recent slew of chatbots proved me wrong, didn’t it? For me, ChatGPT et al. really made me see that scene in a new light. Of course, the thing is that Rorschach and ChatGPT are not using language, right? Not really using, only uttering, because their utterances can’t have an intentional relation with the outside world; their physical form would made most of their utterances nonsensical, for starters. So, I still don’t buy into Searle’s argument, but the encounter with Rorschach seems completely plausible to me, now.
– Relating to the same, I always thought there was definitely one problem of interpretation with the Chinese room, namely when Siri thinks to himself *he* is a Chinese room. The one thing a Chinese room can’t do, I thought, was think of itself in those terms, because they imply consciousness. But recently I had an experience where I had to comfort someone going through grief. I held them while they cried on my shoulder and said the appropriate, soothing words, but I felt nothing relating to the interaction and kept thinking: “damn, I’m a Chinese room.” It was a bit scary, to be honest.
‘Blindsight’ has a lot to offer on re-read. I hope these observations don’t seem inopportune to you.
Cheers.
Off topic , it’s about the Heaven from Blindsight , would mind transfer from wetware to wetware be easier than from wetware to hardware? Why not use headcheese server racks as intermediate approach before invention of the hardware consciousness emulation?