When We Cease to Understand the World

by Benjamín Labatut

If matter were prone to birthing monsters of this kind, Schwarzschild asked with a trembling voice, were there correlations with the human psyche? Could a sufficient concentration of human will—millions of people exploited for a single end with their minds compressed into the same psychic space—unleash something comparable to the singularity?

He babbled about a black sun dawning over the horizon, capable of engulfing the entire world, and he lamented that there was nothing we could do about it. Because the singularity sent forth no warnings. The point of no return—the limit past which one fell prey to its unforgiving pull—had no sign or demarcation. Whoever crossed it was beyond hope. Their destiny was set, as all possible trajectories led irrevocably to the singularity.

He tried to involve those who had followed him in his mathematical undertakings, but no one shared his sense of urgency or could tolerate his extremism now that the object of his obsession was no longer the abstract world of numbers, but the concrete problems of society—which