Every so often it slips. It seems I am writing a book, but I can’t remember why. Somehow, the sentences are supposed to perform that impossible, intimate task: to translate my inner world into another. Yet they sit there so quiescent and small. How could an arrangement of words do anything, let alone reduce that ultimate threat to which it is all supposedly connected: the looming god machines? I look again at the monitor in which the words are contained and suddenly what once felt so raw and powerful deflates into limpness. Why would anyone listen to me, anyway? Have I said anything new? Or is too weird—the strangeness in my head failing to find handholds in other minds? And it floods, these pieces of doubt. Each one flitting by almost unnoticeably, but in the background they build.

Then sometimes the flood abates as quickly as it came. The world is made of scary stuff: we really may all die, and I really might not be capable of reducing or even much affecting that terrifying threat. Yet somehow this has little to do with the words on the page. The outcomes matter—they do—but that isn’t where the motivation [...]

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First published:
February 4th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fnRqyuceyLuZRFFbZ/solemn-courage-1

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.