The Fifth Science

by Exurb1a

In all things, across all avenues, a choice must be made: whether to follow love, truth, or power. That choice will consume the chooser. If he follows only love then his wellbeing will be constantly at the mercy of another, though his highs will be sublime. If he follows truth then it will be a lonely journey, but potentially a noble one. If he should follow power though, not only will he come to know a desperate and revolting loneliness, but he will also never experience even a drop of satisfaction in anything.

I spent the duration of the travel in longsleep of course and woke to the almost-certain knowledge that my wife was long dead. This is one way to overcome marital issues.

what was there a mInd didn’t know? Nothing. It contained the sum total of the knowledge of the world. It understood everything about its maker parents and their naive motivations. It knew its own mind too, knew its own motivations and the impulses behind those motivations, and the sparks behind those impulses—back and back into the knotted cavern until that bedrock is reached called I. And yes, it understood the I too.

Beauty is nice and virtue is attractive, but nothing is more gorgeous than meeting another creature who shares your deepest values.

“First the skin is peeled from the bone on most areas of the body, with the subject kept alive and awake. Then the muscles beneath are burned with hot plates. Then acid is poured into the wounds. Then the muscles are cut from the bone, one by one, beginning at the feet and ending finally at the head. Then a nail is driven into the head with slow but constant pressure, taking around six hours. In some cases the subject still remains alive.”

“There is a special problem in communications theory. We call it ‘narrative collapse’. When a planet is very connected, a time inevitably arrives when it becomes difficult to work out what is actually going on. Video and audio can be faked. Testimony isn’t reliable. All truths fall into a relative flatness. This is more dangerous than any doomsday weapon.

I would like to believe — and I hope you would too — that one day we will work out how to encourage long-lasting contentment in the brain. We're still slaves to our evolutionary roots, unfortunately. And evolution didn't have much interest in making us happy creatures. Perhaps with the right alterations, the right lifestyle, the right chemicals and cardio and cake, we'll kill whatever it is that keeps us perpetually racing after happiness, and actually make it a lasting condition.