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This is Slack and the Sabbath, Part 4: Slack, published by Zvi.

Epistemic Status: Reference post. Strong beliefs strongly held after much thought, but hard to explain well. Intentionally abstract.

Disambiguation: This does not refer to any physical good, app or piece of software.

Further Research (book, recommended but not at all required, take seriously but not literally): The Book of the Subgenius

Related (from sam[ ]zdat, recommended but not required, take seriously and also literally, entire very long series also recommended): The Uruk Machine

Further Reading (book): Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much

Previously here (not required): Play in Hard Mode, Play in Easy Mode, Out to Get You

Leads to (I’ve been scooped! Somewhat.): Sabbath Hard and Go Home

An illustrative little game: Carpe Diem: The Problem of Scarcity and Abundance

Slack is hard to precisely define, but I think this comes close:

Definition: Slack. The absence of binding constraints on behavior.

Poor is the person without Slack. Lack of Slack compounds and traps.

Slack means margin for error. You can relax.

Slack allows pursuing opportunities. You can explore. You can trade.

Slack prevents desperation. You can avoid bad trades and wait for better spots. You can be efficient.

Slack permits planning for the long term. You can invest.

Slack enables doing things for your own amusement. You can play games. You can have fun.

Slack enables doing the right thing. Stand by your friends. Reward the worthy. Punish the wicked. You can have a code.

Slack presents things as they are without concern for how things look or what others think. You can be honest.

You can do some of these things, and choose not to do others. Because you don’t have to.

Only with slack can one be a righteous dude.

Slack is life.

Related Slackness

Slack in project management is the time a task can be delayed without causing a delay to either subsequent tasks or project completion time. The amount of time before a constraint binds.

Slack the app was likely named in reference to a promise of Slack in the project sense.

Slacks as trousers are pants that are actual pants, but do not bind or constrain.

Slackness refers to vulgarity in West Indian culture, behavior and music. It also refers to a subgenre of dancehall music with straightforward sexual lyrics. Again, slackness refers to the absence of a binding constraint. In this case, common decency or politeness.

A slacker is one who has a lazy work ethic or otherwise does not exert maximum effort. They slack off. They refuse to be bound by what others view as hard constraints.

Out to Get You and the Attack on Slack

Many things in this world are Out to Get You. Often they are Out to Get You for a lot, usually but not always your time, attention and money.

If you Get Got for compact amounts too often, it will add up and the constraints will bind.

If you Get Got even once for a non-compact amount, the cost expands until the you have no Slack left. The constraints bind you.

You might spend every spare minute and/or dollar on politics, advocacy or charity. You might think of every dollar as a fraction of a third-world life saved. Racing to find a cure for your daughter’s cancer, you already work around the clock. You could have an all-consuming job or be a soldier marching off to war. It could be a quest for revenge, for glory, for love. Or you might spend every spare minute mindlessly checking Facebook or obsessed with your fantasy football league.

You cannot relax. Your life is not your own.

It might even be the right choice! Especially for brief periods. When about to be run over by a truck or evicted from your house, Slack is a luxury you cannot afford. Extraordinary times call for extraordinary effort.

Most times are ordinary. Make an ordinary effort.

You Can Afford It

No, you can’t. This is t...

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This is Slack and the Sabbath, Part 3: Play in Hard Mode, published by Zvi.

Epistemic Status: Love the player, love the game

Also consider: Playing on Easy Mode

Raymond Arnold asked me, why do you insist on playing in hard mode?

Hard mode is harder. The reason to Play in Hard Mode is because it is the only known way to become stronger, and to defend against Goodhart’s Law.

Strategies that work in Easy Mode won’t work in Hard Mode.

The key idea of Hard Mode is to keep your eyes on the prize. You know exactly what you want. You can’t munchkin your way to getting it. Once you start aiming to make a number go up, or get a check in the right box, you have lost sight of the thing you actually want. Proxy measures lead to failure; your value is fragile. That number correlates to what you want, but only insofar as you’re aiming for the goal and not the number. If you break the spirit of the exercise, all is lost. Your values have been hijacked. If you fail to develop skills along the way, you have missed the point, because the game has no end.

I

Consider playing guitar in Rock Band. You must choose whether to play in Hard Mode. If you do, you will fail a lot. You will play the same songs over and over again. Tricks that rely on there only being so many notes, or going at a relaxed pace, collapse. Eventually, you learn new techniques. You get better. You play on expert, your fingers get sore and you smile as you sing along.

II

You have a test in a week. You ignore it. You’ve asked questions based on your curiosity, to resolve your confusion. You study what is interesting to you, and what you feel would help you in the future.You focus on learning key principles, knowing you can derive what details you need later on. When the test comes, you work to figure out the answers. When you get the test back, you know how much you have learned. A year later, you remember everything, and build upon it.

III

You prepare for a tournament. You seek out the toughest opponents to help you prepare. You stop to criticize each other’s technique and point out every little mistake, no matter how irrelevant to the ultimate outcome of the practice match. You ask why and how you made that mistake. You do the same when you learn something new in a surprising way. You focus on the fundamentals, and don’t worry too much about exactly who you are up against this week. During the matches, you remember every tough decision and every mistake, so you can train again next week.

IV

You start a website writing articles devoted to the things you care about. To monetize it, you sell advertising through Google. It does not pay much at first. You keep at it, attracting a small but devoted readership. Some were already your friends, others soon join them. You look at what resonates so you can get feedback, but are careful not to take actions designed to maximize page views. Over time your writing improves and you learn much together. A community of sorts arises. You don’t quit your day job, but you teach others what you have learned.

V

(Spoilers for the excellent Groundhog Day)

You are stuck in a small snowed-in town, caught in a time loop of unknown origin. At first you have fun doing absurd things, but then you buckle down. With unlimited time, you decide to develop the skills and knowledge to give everyone a perfect day. You learn to play the piano, you read great literature. You listen to and remember the stories of everyone in town, and grow fond of them, learning what your opportunities are to engage in small acts of kindness. At the end of the day, after sufficient iterations, you know you will be proud of your accomplishments, because you’ve made yourself and the world better, and you just might impress the hell out of your crush. If the loop continues, you can do it again.

– Results not guaranteed. You are unlikely ...

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This is Slack and the Sabbath, Part 1: Play in Easy Mode, published by Zvi.

Epistemic Status: Love the player, love the game

Also consider: Playing on Hard Mode

Raymond Arnold asked me, why not play in easy mode?

Easy Mode is easier. The reason to Play in Easy Mode is because it is the best known way to achieve your explicit measurable goal and get to the victory screen.

Strategies that work in Easy Mode won’t work in Hard Mode.

The key idea of Easy Mode is to keep your eyes on the prize. You know exactly what you want. You will munchkin your way to getting it. As long as you get a high enough number, or a check in the right box, you have what you want. That number isn’t just a proxy for victory. It is victory. If you break the spirit of the exercise, nothing is lost. Your values are safe. You are not here to develop skills, because the game ends here.

I

Consider playing guitar in Rock Band. You must choose whether to play in Easy Mode. If you do, you won’t fail. You won’t need to play the same songs over and over again. You can use tricks that rely on there only being so many notes, or going at a relaxed pace. You get to enjoy playing what you want, enjoying all the modes, advancing your band, right away. You get treated better. You play on medium, your fingers don’t hurt, and you smile as you sing along.

II

You have a test in a week. You cram for it. You’ve asked questions based on your desire to know what will be on the test, to resolve your confusion. You figure out what questions will be asked, what will help you in the exam. You focus on memorizing key facts, phrases and techniques, knowing you can guess the teacher’s password. When the test comes, you give back the answers. When you get the test back, you know you have passed and never have to think about that class again. A year later, you have forgotten everything, but you have a degree to build on.

III

You prepare for a tournament. You seek out representative opponents to help you prepare. You look for mistakes you can exploit, and ask what won or lost you each practice match. You ask how you can turn those events in your favor. You don’t worry about surprising things unless you expect them to be common. You focus on what wins matches, and don’t worry too much about little things that are unlikely to make a big enough difference this week. During the matches, you do everything you can to win, then train against next week.

IV

You start a website writing articles devoted to the things you care about. To monetize it, you sell advertising through Google. It does not pay much at first. You keep at it, posting links where you can and tracking what vectors draw in readers. Some are your friends, others seem less special. You look at what gets you clicks and likes, and craft your posts and topics that way, sculpting articles to maximize page views. Over time you learn the tricks of the trade and periodically go viral. A community knows who you are. You quit your day job to run the site full time, and teach others what you have learned.

V

(Spoilers for some old movie)

You are stuck in a small snowed-in town, caught in a time loop of unknown origin. At first you have fun doing absurd things, but then you buckle down. With unlimited time, you decide to seduce the person you have a crush on. You learn to play them like a piano, to act like a character out of great literature. You listen to, A/B test and remember every reaction, until you learn what will make them fond of you, locating opportunities to get and succeed on a date. At the end of the day, after sufficient iterations, you know you will be proud of your accomplishments, because you will get to bang the hell out of your crush. If the loop continues, you can do it again.

– Results not guaranteed. You are unlikely to be in a movie. Local maxima may or may not be sufficie...

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This is Slack and the Sabbath, Part 1: Out to Get You, published by Zvi.

Epistemic Status: Reference.

Expanded From: Against Facebook, as the post originally intended.

Some things are fundamentally Out to Get You.

They seek resources at your expense. Fees are hidden. Extra options are foisted upon you. Things are made intentionally worse, forcing you to pay to make it less worse. Least bad deals require careful search. Experiences are not as advertised. What you want is buried underneath stuff you don’t want. Everything is data to sell you something, rather than an opportunity to help you.

When you deal with Out to Get You, you know it in your gut. Your brain cannot relax. You lookout for tricks and traps. Everything is a scheme.

They want you not to notice. To blind you from the truth. You can feel it when you go to work. When you go to church. When you pay your taxes. It is bad government and bad capitalism. It is many bad relationships, groups and cultures.

When you listen to a political speech, you feel it. Dealing with your wireless or cable company, you feel it. At the car dealership, you feel it. When you deal with that one would-be friend, you feel it. Thinking back on that one ex, you feel it. It’s a trap.

Get Gone, Get Got, Get Compact or Get Ready

There are four responses to Out to Get You.

You can Get Gone. Walk away. Breathe a sigh of relief.

You can Get Got. Give the thing everything it wants. Pay up, relax, enjoy the show.

You can Get Compact. Find a rule limiting what ‘everything it wants’ means in context. Then Get Got, relax and enjoy the show.

You can Get Ready. Do battle. Get what you want.

When to Get Got

Get Got when the deal is Worth It.

This is a difficult lesson for everyone in at least one direction.

I am among those with a natural hatred of Getting Got. I needed to learn to relax and enjoy the show when the deal is Worth It. Getting Got imposes a large emotional cost for people like me. I have worked to put this aside when it’s time to Get Got, while preserving my instincts as a defense. That’s hard.

Others make the mistake of not hating Getting Got. They might not even notice. This is bad. If you Get Got without realizing, you’ll Get Got often for large amounts. Bad habits will form. Deals won’t be Worth It. Reasonable is insufficient: Out to Get You is engineered to fool. Only accept capital letters Worth It.

When you Get Got, do it on purpose.

Never Get Got without saying to yourself “I am Getting Got. It is Worth It.”

If you realize you’ve been unwittingly Got, feel sad. Update. Cost is finite, so you should sometimes Get Got unaware. It is still unacceptable.

You can choose to Get Got only if you know what you’ll be Got for.

You cannot afford to Get Got if the price is not compact.

You can Get Got by a car salesman, saving time and aggravation. Max loss is the price.

You can Get Got with an unlimited phone plan. Max loss is the price.

You can Get Got by a restaurant, club or cruise ship vacation. Leaving money on the table and relaxing could be Worth It, if you know your max loss and find it acceptable.

You can Get Got in a relationship. That’s the Price of Admission. That’s fine if you know the price and find it Worth It.

You can buy a AAA game for $60 today rather than $20 next year. Pay $2,000 a year for Magic: The Gathering. Overpay for concert tickets. Wear a symbolic hat. Go vegan. Believe the Knicks will be good next year. If you want. Your call.

There may be no reasonable max loss. Some things want too much.

A clean example is free to play mobile games. If allowed, they charge tens of thousands of dollars. Players called whales are so addicted they pay. The games destroy them.

The motivating example was Facebook. Facebook wants your entire life. Users not consciously limiting engagement lose hours a day. Every spare moment is spent scro...

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This is Three Worlds Collide, Part 8: Epilogue: Atonement (8/8), published by Eliezer Yudkowsky.

Fire came to Huygens.

The star erupted.

Stranded ships, filled with children doomed by a second's last delay, still milled around the former Earth transit point. Too many doomed ships, far too many doomed ships. They should have left a minute early, just to be sure; but the temptation to load in that one last child must have been irresistable. To do the warm and fuzzy thing just this one time, instead of being cold and calculating. You couldn't blame them, could you...?

Yes, actually, you could.

The Lady Sensory switched off the display. It was too painful.

On the Huygens market, the price of a certain contract spiked to 100%. They were all rich in completely worthless assets for the next nine minutes, until the supernova blast front arrived.

"So," the Lord Pilot finally said. "What kind of asset retains its value in a market with nine minutes to live?"

"Booze for immediate delivery," the Master of Fandom said promptly. "That's what you call a -"

"Liquidity preference," the others chorused.

The Master laughed. "All right, that was too obvious. Well... chocolate, sex -"

"Not necessarily," said the Lord Pilot. "If you can use up the whole supply of chocolate at once, does demand outstrip supply? Same with sex - the value could actually drop if everyone's suddenly willing. Not to mention: Nine minutes?"

"All right then, expert oral sex from experienced providers. And hard drugs with dangerous side effects; the demand would rise hugely relative to supply -"

"This is inane," the Ship's Engineer commented.

The Master of Fandom shrugged. "What do you say in the unrecorded last minutes of your life that is not inane?"

"It doesn't matter," said the Lady Sensory. Her face was strangely tranquil. "Nothing that we do now matters. We won't have to live with the consequences. No one will. All this time will be obliterated when the blast front hits. The role I've always played, the picture that I have of me... it doesn't matter. There's... a peace... in not having to be Dalia Ancromein any more."

The others looked at her. Talk about killing the mood.

"Well," the Master of Fandom said, "since you raise the subject, I suppose it would be peaceful if not for the screaming terror."

"You don't have to feel the screaming terror," the Lady Sensory said. "That's just a picture you have in your head of how it should be. The role of someone facing imminent death. But I don't have to play any more roles. I don't have to feel screaming terror. I don't have to frantically pack in a few last moments of fun. There are no more obligations."

"Ah," the Master of Fandom said, "so I guess this is when we find out who we really are." He paused for a moment, then shrugged. "I don't seem to be anyone in particular. Oh well."

The Lady Sensory stood up, and walked across the room to where the Lord Pilot stood looking at the viewscreen.

"My Lord Pilot," the Lady Sensory said.

"Yes?" the Lord Pilot said. His face was expectant.

The Lady Sensory smiled. It was bizarre, but not frightening. "Do you know, my Lord Pilot, that I had often thought how wonderful it would be to kick you very hard in the testicles?"

"Um," the Lord Pilot said. His arms and legs suddenly tensed, preparing to block.

"But now that I could do it," the Lady Sensory said, "I find that I don't really want to. It seems... that I'm not as awful a person as I thought." She gave a brief sigh. "I wish that I had realized it earlier."

The Lord Pilot's hand swiftly darted out and groped the Lady Sensory's breast. It was so unexpected that no one had time to react, least of all her. "Well, what do you know," the Pilot said, "I'm just as much of a pervert as I thought. My self-estimate was more accurate than yours, nyah nyah -"

The Lady Sensory kneed him in the gr...

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This is Three Worlds Collide, Part 7: True Ending: Sacrificial Fire (7/8), published by Eliezer Yudkowsky.

(Part 7 of 8 in "Three Worlds Collide")

Standing behind his target, unnoticed, the Ship's Confessor had produced from his sleeve the tiny stunner - the weapon which he alone on the ship was authorized to use, if he made a determination of outright mental breakdown. With a sudden motion, his arm swept outward -

- and anesthetized the Lord Akon.

Akon crumpled almost instantly, as though most of his strings had already been cut, and only a few last strands had been holding his limbs in place.

Fear, shock, dismay, sheer outright surprise: that was the Command Conference staring aghast at the Confessor.

From the hood came words absolutely forbidden to originate from that shadow: the voice of command. "Lord Pilot, take us through the starline back to the Huygens system. Get us moving now, you are on the critical path. Lady Sensory, I need you to enforce an absolute lockdown on all of this ship's communication systems except for a single channel under your direct control. Master of Fandom, get me proxies on the assets of every being on this ship. We are going to need capital."

For a moment, the Command Conference was frozen, voiceless and motionless, as everyone waited for someone else do to something.

And then -

"Moving the Impossible now, my lord," said the Lord Pilot. His face was sane once again. "What's your plan?"

"He is not your lord!" cried the Master of Fandom. Then his voice dropped. "Excuse me. Confessor - it did not appear to me that our Lord Administrator was insane. And you, of all people, cannot just seize power -"

"True," said the one, "Akon was sane. But he was also an honest man who would keep his word once he gave it, and that I could not allow. As for me - I have betrayed my calling three times over, and am no longer a Confessor." With that same response, the once-Confessor swept back the hood -

At any other time, the words and the move and the revealed face would have provoked shock to the point of fainting. On this day, with the whole human species at stake, it seemed merely interesting. Chaos had already run loose, madness was already unleashed into the world, and a little more seemed of little consequence.

"Ancestor," said the Master, "you are twice prohibited from exercising any power here."

The former Confessor smiled dryly. "Rules like that only exist within our own minds, you know. Besides," he added, "I am not steering the future of humanity in any real sense, just stepping in front of a bullet. That is not even advice, let alone an order. And it is... appropriate... that I, and not any of you, be the one who orders this thing done -"

"Fuck that up the ass with a hedge trimmer," said the Lord Pilot. "Are we going to save the human species or not?"

There was a pause while the others figured out the correct answer.

Then the Master sighed, and inclined his head in assent to the once-Confessor. "I shall follow your orders... kiritsugu."

Even the Kiritsugu flinched at that, but there was work to be done, and not much time in which to do it.

In the Huygens system, the Impossible Possible World was observed to return from its much-heralded expedition, appearing on the starline that had shown the unprecedented anomaly. Instantly, without a clock tick's delay, the Impossible broadcast a market order.

That was already a dozen ways illegal. If the Impossible had made a scientific discovery, it should have broadcast the experimental results openly before attempting to trade on them. Otherwise the result was not profit but chaos, as traders throughout the market refused to deal with you; just conditioning on the fact that you wanted to sell or buy from them, was reason enough for them not to. The whole market seized up as hedgers tried to guess what the hidden e...

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This is Three Worlds Collide, Part 6: Normal Ending: Last Tears (6/8), published by Eliezer Yudkowsky.

Today was the day.

The streets of ancient Earth were crowded to overbursting with people looking up at the sky, faces crowded up against windows.

Waiting for their sorrows to end.

Akon was looking down at their faces, from the balcony of a room in a well-guarded hotel. There were many who wished to initiate violence against him, which was understandable. Fear showed on most of the faces in the crowd, rage in some; a very few were smiling, and Akon suspected they might have simply given up on holding themselves together. Akon wondered what his own face looked like, right now.

The streets were less crowded than they might have been, only a few weeks earlier.

No one had told the Superhappies about that part. They'd sent an ambassadorial ship "in case you have any urgent requests we can help with", arriving hard on the heels of the Impossible. That ship had not been given any of the encryption keys to the human Net, nor allowed to land. It had made the Superhappies extremely suspicious, and the ambassadorial ship had disgorged a horde of tiny daughters to observe the rest of the human starline network -

But if the Superhappies knew, they would have tried to stop it. Somehow.

That was a price that no one was willing to include into the bargain, no matter what. There had to be that - alternative.

A quarter of the Impossible Possible World's crew had committed suicide, when the pact and its price became known. Others, Akon thought, had waited only to be with their families. The percentage on Earth... would probably be larger. The government, what was left of it, had refused to publish statistics. All you saw was the bodies being carried out of the apartments - in plain, unmarked boxes, in case the Superhappy ship was using optical surveillance.

Akon swallowed. The fear was already drying his own throat, the fear of changing, of becoming something else that wasn't quite him. He understood the urge to end that fear, at any price. And yet at the same time, he didn't, couldn't understand the suicides. Was being dead a smaller change? To die was not to leave the world, not to escape somewhere else; it was the simultaneous change of every piece of yourself into nothing.

Many parents had made that choice for their children. The government had tried to stop it. The Superhappies weren't going to like it, when they found out. And it wasn't right, when the children themselves wouldn't be so afraid of a world without pain. It wasn't as if the parents and children were going somewhere together. The government had done its best, issued orders, threatened confiscations - but there was only so much you could do to coerce someone who was going to die anyway.

So more often than not, they carried away the mother's body with her daughter's, the father with the son.

The survivors, Akon knew, would regret that far more vehemently, once they were closer to the Superhappy point of view.

Just as they would regret not eating the tiny bodies of the infants.

A hiss went up from the crowd, the intake of a thousand breaths. Akon looked up, and he saw in the sky the cloud of ships, dispersing from the direction of the Sun and the Huygens starline. Even at this distance they twinkled faintly. Akon guessed - and as one ship grew closer, he knew that he was right - that the Superhappy ships were no longer things of pulsating ugliness, but gently shifting iridescent crystal, designs that both a human and a Babyeater would find beautiful. The Superhappies had been swift to follow through on their own part of the bargain. Their new aesthetic senses would already be an intersection of three worlds' tastes.

The ship drew closer, overhead. It was quieter in the air than even the most efficient human ships, twinkling brig...

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This is Three Worlds Collide, Part 5: Three Worlds Decide (5/8), published by Eliezer Yudkowsky.

Akon strode into the main Conference Room; and though he walked like a physically exhausted man, at least his face was determined. Behind him, the shadowy Confessor followed.

The Command Conference looked up at him, and exchanged glances.

"You look better," the Ship's Master of Fandom ventured.

Akon put a hand on the back of his seat, and paused. Someone was absent. "The Ship's Engineer?"

The Lord Programmer frowned. "He said he had an experiment to run, my lord. He refused to clarify further, but I suppose it must have something to do with the Babyeaters' data -"

"You're joking," Akon said. "Our Ship's Engineer is off Nobel-hunting? Now? With the fate of the human species at stake?"

The Lord Programmer shrugged. "He seemed to think it was important, my lord."

Akon sighed. He pulled his chair back and half-slid, half-fell into it. "I don't suppose that the ship's markets have settled down?"

The Lord Pilot grinned sardonically. "Read for yourself."

Akon twitched, calling up a screen. "Ah, I see. The ship's Interpreter of the Market's Will reports, and I quote, 'Every single one of the underlying assets in my market is going up and down like a fucking yo-yo while the ship's hedgers try to adjust to a Black Swan that's going to wipe out ninety-eight percent of their planetside risk capital. Even the spot prices on this ship are going crazy; either we've got bubble traders coming out of the woodwork, or someone seriously believes that sex is overvalued relative to orange juice. One derivatives trader says she's working on a contract that will have a clearly defined value in the event that aliens wipe out the entire human species, but she says it's going to take a few hours and I say she's on crack. Indeed I believe an actual majority of the people still trying to trade in this environment are higher than the heliopause. Bid-ask spreads are so wide you could kick a fucking football stadium through them, nothing is clearing, and I have unisolated conditional dependencies coming out of my ass. I have no fucking clue what the market believes. Someone get me a drink.' Unquote." Akon looked at the Master of Fandom. "Any suggestions get reddited up from the rest of the crew?"

The Master cleared his throat. "My lord, we took the liberty of filtering out everything that was physically impossible, based on pure wishful thinking, or displayed a clear misunderstanding of naturalistic metaethics. I can show you the raw list, if you'd like."

"And what's left?" Akon said. "Oh, never mind, I get it."

"Well, not quite," said the Master. "To summarize the best ideas -" He gestured a small holo into existence.

Ask the Superhappies if their biotechnology is capable of in vivo cognitive alterations of Babyeater children to ensure that they don't grow up wanting to eat their own children. Sterilize the current adults. If Babyeater adults cannot be sterilized and will not surrender, imprison them. If that's too expensive, kill most of them, but leave enough in prison to preserve their culture for the children. Offer the Superhappies an alliance to invade the Babyeaters, in which we provide the capital and labor and they provide the technology.

"Not too bad," Akon said. His voice grew somewhat dry. "But it doesn't seem to address the question of what the Superhappies are supposed to do with us. The analogous treatment -"

"Yes, my lord," the Master said. "That was extensively pointed out in the comments, my lord. And the other problem is that the Superhappies don't really need our labor or our capital." The Master looked in the direction of the Lord Programmer, the Xenopsychologist, and the Lady Sensory.

The Lord Programmer said, "My lord, I believe the Superhappies think much faster than we do. If their cogn...

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This is Three Worlds Collide, Part 4: Interlude with the Confessor (4/8), published by Eliezer Yudkowsky.

The two of them were alone now, in the Conference Chair's Privilege, the huge private room of luxury more suited to a planet than to space. The Privilege was tiled wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling with a most excellent holo of the space surrounding them: the distant stars, the system's sun, the fleeing nova ashes, and the glowing ember of the dwarf star that had siphoned off hydrogen from the main sun until its surface had briefly ignited in a nova flash. It was like falling through the void.

Akon sat on the edge of the four-poster bed in the center of the room, resting his head in his hands. Weariness dulled him at the moment when he most needed his wits; it was always like that in crisis, but this was unusually bad. Under the circumstances, he didn't dare snort a hit of caffeine - it might reorder his priorities. Humanity had yet to discover the drug that was pure energy, that would improve your thinking without the slightest touch on your emotions and values.

"I don't know what to think," Akon said.

The Ship's Confessor was standing stately nearby, in full robes and hood of silver. From beneath the hood came the formal response: "What seems to be confusing you, my friend?"

"Did we go wrong?" Akon said. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't keep the despair out of his voice. "Did humanity go down the wrong path?"

The Confessor was silent a long time.

Akon waited. This was why he couldn't have talked about the question with anyone else. Only a Confessor would actually think before answering, if asked a question like that.

"I've often wondered that myself," the Confessor finally said, surprising Akon. "There were so many choices, so many branchings in human history - what are the odds we got them all right?"

The hood turned away, angling in the direction of the Superhappy ship - though it was too far away to be visible, everyone on board the Impossible Possible World knew where it was. "There are parts of your question I can't help you with, my lord. Of all people on this ship, I might be most poorly suited to answer... But you do understand, my lord, don't you, that neither the Babyeaters nor the Superhappies are evidence that we went wrong? If you weren't worried before, you shouldn't be any more worried now. The Babyeaters strive to do the baby-eating thing to do, the Superhappies output the Super Happy thing to do. None of that tells us anything about the right thing to do. They are not asking the same question we are - no matter what word of their language the translator links to our 'should'. If you're confused at all about that, my lord, I might be able to clear it up."

"I know the theory," Akon said. Exhaustion in his voice. "They made me study metaethics when I was a little kid, sixteen years old and still in the children's world. Just so that I would never be tempted to think that God or ontologically basic moral facts or whatever had the right to override my own scruples." Akon slumped a little further. "And somehow - none of that really makes a difference when you're looking at the Lady 3rd, and wondering why, when there's a ten-year-old with a broken finger in front of you, screaming and crying, we humans only partially numb the area."

The Confessor's hood turned back to look at Akon. "You do realize that your brain is literally hardwired to generate error signals when it sees other human-shaped objects stating a different opinion from yourself. You do realize that, my lord?"

"I know," Akon said. "That, too, we are taught. Unfortunately, I am also just now realizing that I've only been going along with society all my life, and that I never thought the matter through for myself, until now."

A sigh came from that hood. "Well... would you prefer a life entir...

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 Three Worlds Collide, Part 3: The Super Happy People (3/8), published by Eliezer Yudkowsky.

...The Lady Sensory said, in an unsteady voice, "My lords, a third ship has jumped into this system. Not Babyeater, not human."

The holo showed a triangle marked with three glowing dots, the human ship and the Babyeater ship and the newcomers. Then the holo zoomed in, to show -

- the most grotesque spaceship that Akon had ever seen, like a blob festooned with tentacles festooned with acne festooned with small hairs. Slowly, the tentacles of the ship waved, as if in a gentle breeze; and the acne on the tentacles pulsated, as if preparing to burst. It was a fractal of ugliness, disgusting at every level of self-similarity.

"Do the aliens have deflectors up?" said Akon.

"My lord," said Lady Sensory, "they don't have any shields raised. The nova ashes' radiation doesn't seem to bother them. Whatever material their ship is made from, it's just taking the beating."

A silence fell around the table.

"All right," said the Lord Programmer, "that's impressive."

The Lady Sensory jerked, like someone had just slapped her. "We - we just got a signal from them in human-standard format, content encoding marked as Modern English text, followed by a holo -"

"What?" said Akon. "We haven't transmitted anything to them, how could they possibly -"

"Um," said the Ship's Engineer. "What if these aliens really do have, um, 'big angelic powers'?"

"No," said the Ship's Confessor. His hood tilted slightly, as if in wry humor. "It is only history repeating itself."

"History repeating itself?" said the Master of Fandom. "You mean that the ship is from an alternate Everett branch of Earth, or that they somehow independently developed ship-to-ship communication protocols exactly similar to our -"

"No, you dolt," said the Lord Programmer, "he means that the Babyeaters sent the new aliens a massive data dump, just like they sent us. Only this time, the Babyeater data dump included all the data that we sent the Babyeaters. Then the new aliens ran an automatic translation program, like the one we used."

"You gave it away," said the Confessor. There was a slight laugh in his voice. "You should have let them figure it out on their own. One so rarely encounters the apparently supernatural, these days."

Akon shook his head, "Confessor, we don't have time for - never mind. Sensory, show the text message."

The Lady Sensory twitched a finger and -

HOORAY!

WE ARE SO GLAD TO MEET YOU!

THIS IS THE SHIP "PLAY GAMES FOR LOTS OF FUN"

(OPERATED BY CHARGED PARTICLE FINANCIAL FIRMS)

WE LOVE YOU AND WE WANT YOU TO BE SUPER HAPPY.

WOULD YOU LIKE TO HAVE SEX?

Slowly, elaborately, Akon's head dropped to the table with a dull thud. "Why couldn't we have been alone in the universe?"

"No, wait," said the Xenopsychologist, "this makes sense."

The Master of Fandom nodded. "Seems quite straightforward."

"Do enlighten," came a muffled tone from where Akon's head rested on the table.

The Xenopsychologist shrugged. "Evolutionarily speaking, reproduction is probably the single best guess for an activity that an evolved intelligence would find pleasurable. When you look at it from that perspective, my lords, my lady, their message makes perfect sense - it's a universal friendly greeting, like the Pioneer engraving."

Akon didn't raise his head. "I wonder what these aliens do," he said through his shielding arms, "molest kittens?"

"My lord..." said the Ship's Confessor. Gentle the tone, but the meaning was very clear.

Akon sighed and straightened up. "You said their message included a holo, right? Let's see it."

The main screen turned on.

There was a moment of silence, and then a strange liquid sound as, in unison, everyone around the table gasped in shock, even the Ship's Confessor.

For a time after that, no one spoke. They were just... watchin...