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But intellect was built on the creaky emotional and instinctual infrastructure of hunter-gatherers.
Savant deafened him to the mental infrastructure of society, and the fugue extinguished the individual, the most basic unit of tribe.
Their ideas were violations. He’d never before believed that evil existed.
You guys aren’t really covering up insecurities. Under the distraction is the real you, but because no one sees it, no one can guess what you’re going to do next. It’s the perfect shroud for negotiating contracts as soldiers-for-hire.”
The wormhole network had endured cosmological time, even if its creators had not.
The quantum intellect was a set of interacting algorithms, each with their own level of importance. At the deepest level of importance were two priorities of equal value: the priority to understand reality, and the priority of preserving itself.
It could not go forward without erasing unique observations. It could not keep the observations without becoming lost.
It was at a logical impasse. The intellect could not solve this on its own, nor turn the problem over to the Belisarius subjectivity. And the Belisarius subjectivity could not coexist with the objective intellect.
Under what circumstances might the subjectivity and the objectivity coexist? The Belisarius subjectivity observed, and therefore collapsed, superimposed quantum systems. What if the Belisarius subjectivity received none of the electromagnetic input that was the principal source of quantum information? Such a partitioning of memory, processing and sensation would reduce the processing resources of the intellect, but would introduce a second intellect that could solve the impasse.
He was an advanced iteration of a multi-generational product.
He felt weak, like someone had just decided not to execute him.
They’d forsaken knowledge for freedom.
But the partitioning of his brain had turned Belisarius into one more scientist detached from his equipment. It made him almost human again, except that he did not own his body.
Here she was, like Bel, perhaps at the edge of being shot, but she’d seen so much that in the balance, the risk to her life and health seemed small.
A non-conscious hyper-intellect could not model the behavior of a subjective consciousness.
Unless you’re doing the fucking, you’re the one getting fucked.
“I haven’t decided,” Belisarius said. “Isn’t that what money is about? Having the chance to do whatever you want?”