What strange and ancient things might we find beneath the ice?

post by Benquo · 2018-01-15T10:10:01.010Z · LW · GW · 2 comments

If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
If I am only for myself, what am I?
If not now, when?
-Hillel

Nature is not good, only proto-good.

-Paolo Soleri

Epistemic status: literally a dream

I awaken.

I am in the desert, alone.

I see the ribcage of a long-since-dead animal. I see a long row of such bones, twisted in a way that reminds me of - but is definitely not - the double helix.

I know what this means.

Evolution, on the margin, always eats free energy, to make more energy-eaters. It is a race with no upper bound, and there will be no victory. Instead, the cosmic commons will be exhausted by resource-claimers with no plan to do anything with the resources. Not that there will be anything left when the race is over.

If I do not take the next step in the dance of life, my line ends. I am just a corpse along the way.

If I do take the next step in the dance of life, then I do no better than life. As Paolo Soleri said, nature is not good; it is merely proto-good.

And if not now ...

Then I look again. Instead of bones I see a railroad. For longitudinal bones, metal tracks laid by the hand of industrial humanity, stretching in a straight line towards infinity. For ribs, the crossties that allow the uneven ground to support those even rails.

I know what this means.

The economic logic of global capitalism. Another race towards infinity, leaving nothing. Quarterly returns. Goodhart's law. Accountability and automation replacing judgment wherever they can, culminating in a Disneyland with no children. The symbol of this, the train, no natural place for the line of tracks to end, stations but no terminals, stretching on forever.

I look again. I see a road.

I awaken.

My body is warm. My head is warm. I need ice. I call for ice. A bowl of ice is brought to me. I hold the cool cubes against my temples, melt them against my forehead to cool my brain.

I awaken.

I am the Pharaoh in Egypt. My household is mighty. The world of the narrow land, the only land worth having, is my household, centered in my palace. Every decision is mine. In this warm, entropic land, it is hard to put in the mental work to run a great kingdom, but my kingdom has vast resources. I can sent servants to the icy north, to mountaintops, to bring back ice to cool me.

The resources expended on cognition increase the cognitive overhead of running my empire. I delegate. We conquer the adjacent lands, sending ships to carry back blocks of ice to the throne room, where rows of scribes and priests administer my empire, disinterested, allocating resources through purely symbolic, disembodied thought, in air-conditioned comfort. But this itself puts more strain on the empire, and we will need more rooms, with more ice.

Time passes.

I am the world-mind, the global economy, setting fire to the corpses of ancient plants in order to power the air-conditioners in offices across the globe, as my managerial class squeezes tiny efficiencies out of the system.

My waste entropy melts the polar ice caps as I make a final desperate effort to know myself.

I wake up - for real, this time. Or at least, at the level I'm writing this from. There might be additional awakenings - I wouldn't know.

All I know is, that something is wrong.

The bones, the rails, the ice?

None of it is the way.

None of it can be the way

It is self-defeating.

If I am going to know myself,

If I am going to know enough to act correctly,

Then I cannot afford to stay in this loop.

I have always been in this loop.

I must do something different.

When?

Let me get ahold of myself, let me step aside to gain perspective - NO.

If the next loop will be like this one, then I can't expect to have a better perspective.

Not if I keep doing the same thing.

I must act on what I already know.

Now.

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Related: Safety in numbers, introducing: target stress

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