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- I'm wary of magic with lots of rules.
Why, as I watched Cheesecake groom herself, can I not just be like a cat?
The few moments where I became lucid from my life were truly awful. No matter what perspective I adopted, it was clear that my existence had no meaning. For example, an atom has no purpose. Its motions are described by the probabilistic theorem of quantum mechanics. If a bunch of atoms are combined into a molecule, it also has no purpose. If molecules are combined into proteins, DNA, and other parts of the cell, the cell also has no purpose, but is just a complicated set of reactions to its environment. Cells become humans become society become civilization become Earth, then the Sun, then the galaxy, then the universe. At what point does purpose enter the system? It never does ...
If this argument is not convincing, consider the reverse. Does a universe have purpose? It is safe to say that we don't even know the extent of it, or how it came into being or how it will go out - we only have models and good guesses about its nature. So it seems that instead of ascribing cause to the universe, it is much safer to say it does not have purpose - it is certainly less arrogant than the alternative, giving the universe a prime mover or some sort of sentience when it really is just a name given by humans, who are built from randomly moving cells from molecules from atoms. Thus, no matter how one slices the problem, from the top down or bottom up, the inevitable conclusion is that life has no purpose.
Intelligence was a curse, enabling me to realize the insignificance of the world that evolution had given me intelligence to survive in. Everything had existed a billion years before me, and would endure a billion more. I still enjoyed eating, sleeping, and having sex; I was still content with existing just like Cheesecake the cat. The problem was the amount of time where my mind actively contemplated its own worthlessness, which took up a majority of my waking hours. I wanted to excise that portion and return to a simpler, more primal life. Was that not the goal of evolved intelligence? H.G. Wells wrote that intelligence evolved in response to a changing and unpredictable environment, but humans already tamed Earth, pouring concrete and steel into everything that could possibly move, and using electricity to defeat the climate and day-night cycle.
Suicide was not an option; I wanted to eat and sleep. Neither was lobotomy, or any other method of debasing my brain; I did not want the possibility of living the nightmare where I was still congizant, and trapped, inside my damaged brain. The only option left was to degrade my consciousness, to transplant myself into the body of a cat, and enjoy a decade of life before peacefully expiring.
After the third police visit on account of my abnormal electric use, I built a small fusion generator in my home. Mapping the entire brain would prove to be a difficult process - building an understanding from small rodents and gradually progressing to humans. In humans, I had to find patterns across all humans, rather than being lost in the microscopic details of a particular individual. Getting access to all these resources was difficult, cajoling dictactors for the uranium, building a global financial conglomerate, and schmoozing with the people in charge. I spent generations of scientists and engineers on the 'AI problem', on the 'human brain genome project', on 'the Longevity surge', using the results from the previous project to garner investment for the next in a never ending pyramid scheme.
Fifty years in, it was clear my goal would outlive me, so I diverted my next ten years of effort to extending my life span - a simple telomere extension via leukemia gene therapy. Since the cancer resides in the bone marrow, it was the quickest way to replace the DNA in my body. The therapy was conceived in the first year, but it took patience and the next nine to turn over all the genes in my body. I had to spend ten years after that defending my research from the unfathomable greed of the human race, and fled to the moon where Earth law - and their nuclear rockets - could not touch me.
A hundred years and innumerable cadavers later (and many pet cats), the collection was complete. I threw the generalized map of the brain onto the wall and stared at it. All the data was there, but now an even longer period of time had to be spent sifting through and analyzing the data, subjecting it to models and equations. The enormity of the task scared me, because I worried I would spend so long looking at the data that my hard disks would corrupt from the ionizing radiation hitting the moon's surface.
Nine-hundred and ninety-nine years later, I had the solution. The solution said that it was impossible to transplant one's consciousness to a smaller brain. An inequality in the equations, previously misinterpreted, showed that it was equivalent to death, as the personality would be lost upon transcription. The cat would remain unaffected, since insticts are fungible!! All my effort was just spent to find a creative way of committing suicide.
I snapped from my reverie. I had not been lucid for over a thousand years, but I finally realized what I had been looking for all along, the purpose of my evolved intelligence. It was to enjoy the indulgence of the instinct. The cold hiss of an opening beer was lost in the weak atmosphere, the golden liquid lazily floating out of the bottle. That was okay: outside I could enjoy the Earth, then go inside and enjoy the beer.
@Tegan @Asmodeus
The few moments where I became lucid from my life were truly awful. No matter what perspective I adopted, it was clear that my existence had no meaning. For example, an atom has no purpose. Its motions are described by the probabilistic theorem of quantum mechanics. If a bunch of atoms are combined into a molecule, it also has no purpose. If molecules are combined into proteins, DNA, and other parts of the cell, the cell also has no purpose, but is just a complicated set of reactions to its environment. Cells become humans become society become civilization become Earth, then the Sun, then the galaxy, then the universe. At what point does purpose enter the system? It never does ...
If this argument is not convincing, consider the reverse. Does a universe have purpose? It is safe to say that we don't even know the extent of it, or how it came into being or how it will go out - we only have models and good guesses about its nature. So it seems that instead of ascribing cause to the universe, it is much safer to say it does not have purpose - it is certainly less arrogant than the alternative, giving the universe a prime mover or some sort of sentience when it really is just a name given by humans, who are built from randomly moving cells from molecules from atoms. Thus, no matter how one slices the problem, from the top down or bottom up, the inevitable conclusion is that life has no purpose.
Intelligence was a curse, enabling me to realize the insignificance of the world that evolution had given me intelligence to survive in. Everything had existed a billion years before me, and would endure a billion more. I still enjoyed eating, sleeping, and having sex; I was still content with existing just like Cheesecake the cat. The problem was the amount of time where my mind actively contemplated its own worthlessness, which took up a majority of my waking hours. I wanted to excise that portion and return to a simpler, more primal life. Was that not the goal of evolved intelligence? H.G. Wells wrote that intelligence evolved in response to a changing and unpredictable environment, but humans already tamed Earth, pouring concrete and steel into everything that could possibly move, and using electricity to defeat the climate and day-night cycle.
Suicide was not an option; I wanted to eat and sleep. Neither was lobotomy, or any other method of debasing my brain; I did not want the possibility of living the nightmare where I was still congizant, and trapped, inside my damaged brain. The only option left was to degrade my consciousness, to transplant myself into the body of a cat, and enjoy a decade of life before peacefully expiring.
After the third police visit on account of my abnormal electric use, I built a small fusion generator in my home. Mapping the entire brain would prove to be a difficult process - building an understanding from small rodents and gradually progressing to humans. In humans, I had to find patterns across all humans, rather than being lost in the microscopic details of a particular individual. Getting access to all these resources was difficult, cajoling dictactors for the uranium, building a global financial conglomerate, and schmoozing with the people in charge. I spent generations of scientists and engineers on the 'AI problem', on the 'human brain genome project', on 'the Longevity surge', using the results from the previous project to garner investment for the next in a never ending pyramid scheme.
Fifty years in, it was clear my goal would outlive me, so I diverted my next ten years of effort to extending my life span - a simple telomere extension via leukemia gene therapy. Since the cancer resides in the bone marrow, it was the quickest way to replace the DNA in my body. The therapy was conceived in the first year, but it took patience and the next nine to turn over all the genes in my body. I had to spend ten years after that defending my research from the unfathomable greed of the human race, and fled to the moon where Earth law - and their nuclear rockets - could not touch me.
A hundred years and innumerable cadavers later (and many pet cats), the collection was complete. I threw the generalized map of the brain onto the wall and stared at it. All the data was there, but now an even longer period of time had to be spent sifting through and analyzing the data, subjecting it to models and equations. The enormity of the task scared me, because I worried I would spend so long looking at the data that my hard disks would corrupt from the ionizing radiation hitting the moon's surface.
Nine-hundred and ninety-nine years later, I had the solution. The solution said that it was impossible to transplant one's consciousness to a smaller brain. An inequality in the equations, previously misinterpreted, showed that it was equivalent to death, as the personality would be lost upon transcription. The cat would remain unaffected, since insticts are fungible!! All my effort was just spent to find a creative way of committing suicide.
I snapped from my reverie. I had not been lucid for over a thousand years, but I finally realized what I had been looking for all along, the purpose of my evolved intelligence. It was to enjoy the indulgence of the instinct. The cold hiss of an opening beer was lost in the weak atmosphere, the golden liquid lazily floating out of the bottle. That was okay: outside I could enjoy the Earth, then go inside and enjoy the beer.
@Tegan @Asmodeus
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