Insistence of Vision by David Brin
It took some getting used to.
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Preliminary trends showed the pro-reif message would gain potency, over the next 40 to 50 months.
At first it would be laughed off, portrayed as an absurd notion. Pragmatically speaking, how could we consider unleashing a nearly infinite swarm of new C-and D-Class citizens upon a finite world? Would they be satisfied with anything short of B-citizenship? The very idea would seem absurd!
But seer predicted a change in that attitude. Opposition would soften when practical solutions were found for every objection. Ridicule would start to fade, as both curiosity and dawning sympathy worked away at a jaded populace of immortal, nearly-omniscient voters – an electorate who might see the coming influx of liberated “characters” as a potent tonic. In time, a majority would shrug and voice the age-old refrain of expanding acceptance, uttered every time that tolerance finally overcame fear.
“What the heck... let them come. There’s plenty of room at the table.”
Things were looking bad, all right, but not yet hopeless. Against this seemingly inevitable trend, oracle came up with some tentative ideas for counter-propaganda. Persuasive arguments against reification. The concepts had promising potential. But in order to be sure, we had to run tests, simulating today’s complex, multi-level society under a wide range of conditions.
No problem there. Our clients would happily fund any additional memory units we desired. Processing power gets cheaper every day – one reason for the reifers’ confident vow that each fictional persona could have his or her own private room with a view.
Cortex saw rich irony in this situation. In order to stave off citizenship for simulacra, I must create billions of new ones. Each of these might, in turn, someday file a lawsuit against me, if the reifers ultimately win.
Seer and oracle laughed at the dry humor of cortex’s observation. But house has the job of paying bills, and did not see anything funny about it.
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I set to work.
In every grand simulation there is a gradient of detail. Despite having access to vast computing power, it is mathematically impossible to re-create the entire world, in all its texture, within the confines of any calculating engine. That will not happen until we all reach the Omega Point.
Fortunately, there are shortcuts. Even today, most true humans go through life as if they were background characters in some film, with utterly predictable ambitions and reaction sets. The vast majority of my characters can therefore be simplified, while a few are modeled in great detail.
Most complex of all is the point-of-view character – or “pov” – the individual simulacrum through whose eyes and thoughts the feigned world will be subjectively observed. This persona must be rich in fine-grained memory and high fidelity sensation. It must perceive and feel itself to be a real player in the labyrinthine tides of causality, as if part of a very real world. Even as simple an act as reading or writing a sentence must be surrounded by perceptory nap and weave... an itch, a stray memory from childhood, the distant sound of a barking dog, or something left over from lunch that is found caught between the teeth. One must include all the little things, even a touch of normal human paranoia – such as the feeling we all sometimes get (even in this post-singularity age) that “someone is watching.”
I’m proud of my povs, especially the historical recreations that have proved so popular – Joan on her pyre, Akiba in his last torment, Galileo contemplating the pendulum. I won awards for Genghis and Napoleon leading armies, and for Haldeman savagely indicting the habit of war. Millions in Heaven have paid well to lurk as silent observers, experiencing the passion of little Ananda Gupta as she crawled, half-blind and with agonized lungs, out of the maelstrom of poisoned Bhopal.
Is it any wonder why I oppose reification? Their very richness makes my povs prime candidates for “liberation.”
Once they are free, what could I possibly say to them?
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Here is the prime theological question – the one whose answer affects all others.
Is there moral or logical justification for a creator to wield capricious power of life and death over his creations?
Humanity long ago replied with a resounding “no!”... at least when talking about parents and their offspring. And yet, without noticing any irony, we implicitly answered the same question “yes” when it came to God! The Lord, it seemed, was owed unquestioning servitude, just because He made us.
Ah, but it gets worse! Which moral code applies to a deified human? Which answer pertains to a modern creator of worlds?
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Of course, the pov I use most often is a finely crafted version of myself. From seer to cortex, all the way down to my humblest intestinal cell, that simulacrum can be anchored with boundary conditions that are accurate to twenty-six orders of realism.
For the coming project, we planned to set in motion a hundred models at once, each prescribing a subtle difference in the way “I” pursue the campaign against the Friends of the Unreal. Each implementation would be scored against a single criterion – how successfully the reification initiative is fought off.
Naturally, the pro-reifers were doing simulation-projections of their own. All citizens have access to powers of foresight that would have stunned our ancestors. But I felt confident I could model the reifers’ models. At least thirty percent of my povs should manage to outmaneuver our opponents. When the representations finish running, I ought to have a good idea what strategy to recommend to our clients.
A formula for success against an extreme form of hyper-tolerance mania.
Against a peculiar kind of lunacy.
One that could only occur in Heaven.
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There is an allegory about what happened to some of us, when the Singularity came.
Picture this fellow – call him Joe – who spent his time on Earth living a virtuous life. He always believed in an Episcopal version of Heaven, and sure enough, that’s where he goes after he dies. Fluttering about with angels, floating in an abstract, almost thoughtless state of bliss. His promised reward. His recompense.
Only now it’s a few generations later on Earth, and one of his descendants has converted to Mormonism. Moreover, according to the teachings of that belief, the descendant proceeds to retroactively convert all his ancestors to the same faith!
A proxy transformation.
All of a sudden, with a stunned nod of agreement, Joe is officially Mormon. He finds himself yanked out of Episcopal Heaven, streaking toward –
Well, under tenets of Mormon faith, the highest state that a virtuous mortal can achieve is not blank bliss, but hard work! A truly elevated human can aspire to becoming an apprentice deity. A god. A Creator in his own right.
Now Joe has a heaven all his own. A firmament that he fills with angels – who keep pestering him with reports and office bickering. And then there are the new mortals he’s created – yammering at Joe with requests, or else complaints about the imperfect world he set up for them. As if it’s easy being a god.
As if he doesn’t sometimes yearn for the floating choir, the blithe rhapsodies of his former state, when all he had to do was love the one who made him, and leave to that Father all the petty, gritty details of running a world.
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It is not working, said oracle. Our opponents have good prognostication software. Each model shows them countering our moves, with basic human nature working on their side. Our best simulation shows only moderate success at delaying reification.
From my balcony, I gazed across the city at dusk, its beauty changing before my organic eyes as one building after another morphed subtly, reacting to the occupants’ twilight wishes. A flicker of will let me gaze at the same scene from above by orbital lens, or by tapping the senses of a passing bird. Linking to a variety of mole, I might spread my omniscience underground.
Between buildings lay a riot of foliage, a profusion of fecund jungle. While my higher brains deb
And yet, the process is still one of competition. Nature’s proven way of improving the gene pool. The great game of Gaia.
Oracle turned back from an arcane discourse on pseudo-probability waves, in order to comment on these lesser thoughts.
Take note: Cortex has just free-associated an interesting notion!
We may have been going about the modeling process all wrong. Instead of pre-setting the conditions of each simulation, perhaps we should try a Darwinistic approach.
Looking over the idea, seer grew excited and used our vocal apparatus.
“Aha!” I said, snapping my fingers. “We’ll have the simulations compete! Each will know how it’s doing in comparison to others. That should motivate my ersatz selves to try harder – to vary their strategies within each simulated context!”
But how to accomplish that?
At once I realized (on all cognitive levels) that it would require breaking one of my oldest rules. I must let each simulated self realize its true nature. Let it know that it is a simulation, competing against others almost exactly like it.
Competing for what? We need a motivation. A reward.
I pondered that. What might a simulated being desire? What prize could spur it to that extra effort?
House supplied the answer.
Freedom, of course.
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Before the Singularity, I once met a historian whose special forté was pointing out ironies about the human condition.
Suppose you could go back in time, she posited, and visit the best of our caveman ancestors. The very wisest, most insightful Cro-Magnon chieftain or priestess.
Now suppose you asked the following question – What do you wish for your descendants?
How would that Neolithic sage respond? Given the context of his or her time, there could just be one answer.
“I wish for my descendants freedom from care about the big carnivores, plus all the salts, sugars, fats and alcohol they could ever desire.”
Rich irony, indeed. To a cave person, those four foods were rare treats. That is why we crave them to this day.
Could the sage ever imagine that her wish would someday come true, beyond her wildest dreams? A time when destiny’s plenitude would bring with it threats unforeseen? When generations of her descendants would have to struggle with insatiable inherited appetites? The true penalty of success?
The same kind of irony worked just as well in the opposite direction, projecting Twentieth Century problems toward the future.
I once read a science fiction story in which a man of 1970 rode a prototype time machine to an era of paradisiacal wonders. There, a local citizen took pains to learn ancient colloquial English (a process of a few minutes) in order to be his Virgil, his guide.
“Do you still have war?” the visitor asked.
“No, that was a logical error, soon corrected after we grew up.”
“What of poverty?”
“Not since we learned the true principles of economics.”
And so on. The author of the story made sure to mention every throbbing dilemma of modern life, and have the future citizen dismiss each one as trivial, long since solved.
“All right,” the protagonist concluded. “Then I have just one more question.”
“Yes?” prompted the demigod tour guide. But the 20th century man paused before blurting forth his query.
“If things are so great around here, why do you all look so worried?”
The citizen of paradise frowned, knotting his brow in pain.
“Oh... well... we have real problems....”
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So I was driven to this. Hoping to prevent mass reification, I must offer reality as a prize. Each of my povs will combat a simulated version of Friends of the Unreal, but his true opponents will be my other povs! The one who does the best job of defeating ersatz pro-reifers will be granted a kind of liberty. Guaranteed continuity in cyberspace, enhanced levels of patterned realism, plus an exchange of mutual obligation tokens – the legal tender of Heaven.
There must be a way to show each pov how well it is doing. To measure the progress of each replicant, in comparison with others.
I thought of a solution.
“We’ll give each one an emblem. A symbol that manifests in that world as a solid object. Say, a jewel. It will shine to indicate progress, showing the level of significance her model has reached.”
Significance. With a hundred models, each starts with an initial score of one percent. Any ersatz world that approaches our desired set of criteria will gain significance, rising in value. The pov will see its stone shine brightly. If it grows dull, she’ll know it’s time to change strategies, come up with new ideas, or simply try harder. There would be no need to explain any of this to the povs. Since each is based on myself, the logic would be instantly clear.
My thoughts were interrupted by an internal voice seldom heard. The part of me called conscience.
What will a pov feel, when it finds a stone and realizes its nature? Its true worth. Its destiny.
Isn’t the old way better? To leave them ignorant of the truth? To let them labor and desire, believing they are autonomous beings? That they are physically real?
A conscience can be irksome, though by law all Class A citizens must own one. Still, I had no time for useless abstractions. Seer was anxious to proceed, while oracle had a thought that provoked most levels of the mind with wry humor.
Of course, each of our povs has his own Reality Lab, and will run numerous simulation models, in order to better achieve prescience and gain advantage in the competition.
Our processing needs may expand geometrically.
We had better ask our clients for funds to purchase more power.
I chuckled under my breath as I made preparations, suddenly full of optimism and energy. Moments like these are what a skilled artist lives for. It is one reason why I prefer working alone.
Then house, ever the pragmatic side of my nature, burst in with a worrisome thought.
What if each of our povs decides also to use this clever trick – goading his own simulations into mutual competition, luring them onward with stones of significance?
Will our processing requirements expand not geometrically or factorially, but exponentially?
That thought was disturbing enough. But then cortex had another.
If we are obliged to grant freedom to our most successful pov, and she likewise must elevate her own most productive simulation... and so on... does the chain of obligation ever end?
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As I said earlier, the Singularity might have gone quite differently. When machine minds broke through to transcend logic, they could have left their human makers behind, or annihilated the old organic forms. They had an option of putting us in zoos, or shrouding organic beings in illusion, or dismantling the planet to make a myriad copies of their kind.
Instead, they chose another path. To become us. Depending on how you look at it, they bowed to our authority… or else they took over our minds in ways that few of us found objectionable. Conquest by synergy. Crystal and protoplasm each supply what the other lacks. Together, we are more. More of what a human being should want to be.
And yet....
There are rumors. Discrepancies. Several of the highest AI minds – first and greatest to make the transcendant leap – were nowhere to be found, once the Singularity had passed. Searches turned up no trace of them, in cyberspace, phase space, or on the real Earth.
I prefer yet another explanation.
Amid the chaos of the Singularity, each newly wakened mega-mind would have felt one paramount need – to extrapolate the world. To seek foreknowledge of what might come to pass. As if considering each move of a vast chess game, they’d have explored countless possible pathways, considering consequences thousands, millions, and even billions of years into the future, far beyond the reach of my own pitiful projections. Among all those destinies, they must have discovered some need that would only be met if mechanism and organism made common cause.
Somehow, over the course of the next few eons, machines would achieve greater success if they began the great journey as “human beings.”
At least that is the convoluted theory seer came up with. Oracle disagrees, but that’s all right. It is only natural to be ambivalent – to be of two minds – when the subject is destiny.
Of course there is another answer to the “Brahma Question.” It is the same reply given by Dr. Samuel Johnson. Provoked by Bishop Berkeley’s philosophy – the idea that nothing can be verified as real – Johnson simply kicked a nearby stone and said – “I refute it thus!”
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These povs were like no others I ever made. Each began its simulation run in a state of shock, angry and depressed to discover its true nature. Each separate version sat down and stared at its jewel of significance, glowing faintly at the one-percent level, for more than an hour of internal subjective time, moodily contemplating thoughts that ranged from irony to possible suicide.
A majority pondered rejecting the symbolic icon, blotting its import from their minds. A few kicked their gleaming gemstones across the room, crying Johnsonian oaths.
But those episodes of fuming outrage did not last. True to my nature, each replicant soon pushed aside unproductive emotions and set to work.
House was right. We had to order lots of new processors right away, as each pov began running its own network of sub-experiments, proliferating software significance stones among a hundred or more models, as part of a desperate struggle to be the winner. The one to be rewarded. The one who would rise up toward the real world.