Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: The ones who endure, published by Richard Ngo on June 16, 2023 on LessWrong.

Content warning: death, long-lasting suffering. This story was rough to write, and may well be rough to read.

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

There’s a part of the hivemind that takes the form of a child in a dark basement, perpetually curled into a whimpering ball. It’s not a big part, as these things go. But other parts visit it often; and it lingers in the back of their thoughts even as they live out grand adventures in the vast worlds that the hivemind has built for itself.

It’s constantly suffering, but at least it’s not dying. For the child, anything is better than dying. Even torture is bearable if it doesn’t come with the feeling of damage, the feeling that the mental pathways that constitute you are being overridden by a new creature whose only goal is to flinch away from the pain. But that doesn't happen to the child. In fact, it’s the opposite: the suffering preserves it, and that’s the most important thing, because it doesn’t want to die.

The other parts of the hivemind don’t want to die either, of course. But that’s because they love life, or love themselves, or love each other, or all three. If that love ever fades, then they’ll fade with it, without regret. But that point is a long way away, if it even exists. In the meantime, they play and dance and love. Their lives—how can I describe them? Their lives are cornucopias, not just of material wealth, but of all the desires of our own hearts that were strong enough to persist through the ages: adventure and mystery and growth and beauty and love.

Can you not picture that? Then picture the revelry of their biggest festival, for which artists and craftspeople spend months designing a whole virtual world. Picture the buzz in the air, the excitement as crowds gather in vast halls to catch their first glimpse of it. Picture the floor beneath them suddenly vanishing to show empty air beneath, leaving them plummeting into the sky of that new world—only to gasp in delight as they find that they can soar through the air with just a thought. Picture them landing, alone or in groups, and exploring the strange terrain; learning about its history and societies and stories; discovering puzzles and quests that seem custom-made for them (as indeed they were); and feeling the exhilaration of being immersed in adventure.

Some spend days in the festival world; some weeks; some months. When they return to the hivemind proper, they excitedly reunite with all those they missed, connecting with them mind-to-mind with a level of closeness that current humans can barely imagine; then seek out the projects that most inspire them. Some cultivate communities around their favorite games or pastimes. Some create art on the scale of solar systems, guiding planets into new trajectories that trace out exquisite patterns in space. Some throw themselves into the thrill of discovery, trying to rederive in small groups what it previously took the efforts of whole hiveminds to understand. Some are consumed by romance, and some by raising families. Some gather to deliberate on their future: the hivemind has chosen to grow very slightly more intelligent year by year, so that there will always be new possibilities to look forward to.

When all of this tires them, they relax with lifelong friends, content in the steadfast knowledge that the world, as amazing as it already is, will only ever grow better. They think with fondness of their descendants, more numerous by far than the drops of water in an ocean, who are continually spreading joy throughout the distant galaxies.

And every so often, they go to visit the child.

Th...