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: You Don't Exist, Duncan, published by Duncan Sabien on February 2, 2023 on LessWrong.

This is an experimental essay, not in the typical LessWrong or Duncan Sabien style.

Depending on how this goes, I might try writing a companion piece in the typical style, laying out the model clearly and explicitly and deriving concrete and specific recommendations from it.

But it seemed worth it to try communicating at a lower and more emotional/visceral level, not least because that is the level at which I actually experience The Problem. Any clear, analytical essay would be the result of me trying to make sense of the thing that I'm going to try to directly convey, below.

It is the year 1995. I am nine years old. In front of me there is a sheet of paper, upon which are written a dozen or so lines of math. The first is:

I stare at it. I know that I can divide both sides of the equation by x, leaving me with:

...but this does not seem to do any good.

I raise my hand. The afterschool volunteer comes over.

"No," he says. "That's not right. X isn't a term on the left side. F is a function."

He has explained nothing.

"F is a function, so what this is saying is to take X, and square it, and add seven."

I look up at him, confused. I am nine. I have never heard the word "function" used in this way before. No one has grounded me in the activity of the day; no one has oriented me; no one has told me today you are learning what a function is, and you will learn by looking at a bunch of examples. No one has said today, parentheses don't mean the thing you're expecting them to mean. No one has said f is a thing that eats xs, and what the right side is showing you is how it eats them—what it does to them.

"So, like, if X is three, right?" he continues. "X is three? So F of X is three squared plus seven, which is sixteen."

I say the words again in my mind, more slowly. F ... of ... (of? What?) ... X. ""F of X"" (okay, whatever, that's nonsense, but whatever) is sixteen.

I look back down at the paper. If the right side of the equation is sixteen, and X is three...

"F is five-point-three-repeating," I say, trying to inject a measure of confidence I do not feel into my tone.

"What? No. F isn't anything. F is a function. It's not part of the equation."

Not part of the equation, he says. Looking back from a distance of twenty-five years, I see (one of) his mistake(s). He doesn't tell me this isn't really an equation at all, not the way you're thinking of it. He doesn't tell me the equals sign here is more like telling you the definition of this thing, F of X—what F of X is is the thing on the other side of the equals sign. He doesn't say a function is when you set up a rule for dealing with numbers, and this rule is, whatever number you put in, you're going to square it, and add seven.

Instead, he looks at me, and says more words, and the message lurking behind the words—the message implicit in his tone and posture and air of tolerant patience—is:

I have given you an adequate explanation. If you were the kind of person who was good at math, my explanation would have been sufficient, and you would now understand. You still do not understand. Therefore...?

My heart rate quickens.

It is 1993. I am seven years old, roughhousing with my older brother and my father on the living room carpet. We clamber over top of him, laughing, pummeling him with tiny fists. He throws us both onto the couch, where we recover and launch ourselves back at him like pouncing tigers.

My father tosses my brother back into the cushions a second time, grabs me in a gentle headlock, digs his knuckles into my scalp in a painful noogie.

"Ow!" I shout, rolling away from him and clutching my head. "Ow. Ow."

The pain is bright and hot, feeling halfway between a cut and a burn. Five seconds pass, and it has not yet begun to fade.

"That...