Chapter 435: The End of the Beginning

Friday, July 25, 2008 and Forever After

Thus begins my godhood. If you will excuse this wording: I have literally an astronomical amount to learn, think about and do. To start with, consider the VERY big picture:

I haven't yet learned enough about the present Universe, but when I've done so I'll start delving into the past, making myself into an archeologist on the largest possible scale because I want to understand what happened to all the past alien species that should have reached advanced levels of civilization. From what I've already learned from the existing species, some of which are in trouble, it appears that the drives that cause each species to succeed also contain the flaws that lead to their eventual destruction. The most obvious example of that being the aggression that allows one species to triumph over all the others in its environment. When there are no longer any competitors, that aggressive instinct still continues to act, but against its own species. Or if that species does get into space, its aggression will sooner or later lead it to attack a species that it really shouldn't. From what I can see, interstellar wars don't last long because ecosystems - usually planets - are too easily destroyed or rendered uninhabitable when the combatants have advanced technologies. Another obvious psychological driver that can build a species up but also harm it, is greed. Both of those examples are very evident in humans. Some alien species seem to have quite different psychologies, such as being highly cooperative, but I'm beginning to see that they are experiencing the same "Initially good, eventually bad" progression.

I definitely want to do more research on this issue. If the seeds for success are inevitably, or even just usually, also fatal flaws, should I interfere with that process? And if so, how? There are MANY possibilities, some of which are strange at first thought but must be considered, such as preventing any species from achieving dominance. As a god I can very easily ensure that every species is exposed to a superior one, even if it's a fake one. But should I? Humanity's arrogance will give me great delight in bursting, but it's not clear that I should do that to every other successful or near-successful species throughout the Universe. If not, then maybe I shouldn't do it to humanity in as many dimensions as I'm currently intending. I think bursting humanity's arrogance will help it considerably, but the long-term effects are unpredictable so maybe I should play safer by leaving more dimensions alone as insurance against my misjudgment.

I've already seen that evolution operates throughout the entire Universe, with species coming and going as a result of their successes and failures. Until very recently I had never thought to question whether evolution was a good thing, so my initial thought had been that it'd be best for me to let that natural process continue unhindered, possibly even if humanity eliminates itself. (I don't want to lose my loved ones, not even millennia from now, but there are many ways to ensure their survival including ways that don't depend on humanity's survival. There's no reason why my loved ones can't be transplanted into another species. By then we should be so familiar with many other intelligent species that we will likely know several others we'd prefer to be part of, especially if humanity is so stupid as to destroy itself.)

On the other hand, it has recently occurred to me that evolution is literally a stupid system, as there is absolutely no guiding intelligence involved anywhere in the process. Whether or not a species does well is literally a matter of luck, and given that bad luck only needs to strike very badly once to wipe out a species, evolution surely can't be the best way to run the Universe. That's especially true because it is such an incredibly slow process, so it has a dangerously lagged feedback loop to environmental changes. (For those of you who don't understand what a "delayed feedback loop" means, imagine driving your car, but after you turn the steering wheel there's a ten-second delay before the wheels themselves turn.) Evolution is terribly slow, taking many hundreds of generations to have any significant effect on a large population, which renders evolution unable to react fast enough to reinforce successful behaviors, or punish unsuccessful behaviors, in a rapidly changing environment such as humanity has now. Evolution is therefore not selecting the best characteristics, so it's creating humans who are increasingly bad fits for an increasingly complex world. Maybe it's evolution's deficiencies that have been causing civilizations all over the Universe to collapse? Which immediately creates the question: What is the best way to run the Universe?

I don't believe the Universe has a purpose. It exists and can be used, and that is all. It's effectively just a big box so has no intrinsic goal of its own. It is now up to me to choose how I will influence what happens inside that box.

I could write: "It will be my use of the Universe that will define whether it is used for Good or Evil," but I suspect that even those two concepts don't apply to the Universe as a whole. That seems like a very strange claim, but I believe it could be true. My intending to be a Universal archaeologist is largely motivated by wanting to get some perspective on the Universe, but as interesting as the task will be, I suspect I'll never get enough perspective. That's the fundamental problem.

Good and Evil certainly apply within the box. For example, every organized religion has clerics who do good and others who do evil. But there's no perspective from which to apply the concepts of Good and Evil to the box's entire contents as a whole. For example, I could create and spread life throughout the Universe, so there would be FAR more of it than there is now. Or I could identify what I thought was the 'Good-est' species and spread it throughout the entire Universe, removing all the lesser species to make more room for more of the best one. Or I could continue to let species naturally succeed and/or fail according to their own merits or lack thereof. Or I could take the perspective that life is damaging the Universe (certainly humanity is damaging the Earth's surface itself and its natural life), so I should destroy all life, or perhaps just tool-using life, to leave the Universe 'pure'. Or I could remove all of the Universe's existing life and repopulate it with life that I would create from scratch, perhaps solar-powered life. Is any one of those mutually incompatible options more Good or more Evil than the others? I simply can't judge because judgment requires a perspective of some sort; usually a goal or at least a guiding principle. Mom and Dad are good parents because that goal is defined externally to them; a god of the Universe can't be Good because there's no external definition. The god's actions can only be judged from internal perspectives, and just about everything with a brain has different ideas.

I certainly don't have a goal and suspect I never will have one that I believe is essential to pursue throughout the entire Universe. Although I can easily think of dozens of possible guiding principles that I could adopt and pursue, such as "Maximize the number of intelligent species in the Universe," choosing one of those would simply be my pleasing myself rather than doing something because it is "The Right Thing To Do". There's simply no way for me to tell what is "Right".

That doesn't mean I won't be doing Universe-wide things to please myself. The possible guiding principle of "Keeping the Universe pure by removing all intelligent life," won't even be considered simply because I don't want to do it. In my selfish desire to have a Universe full of interesting creatures, whether that principle is Right or Wrong doesn't matter to me.

I would feel easier if I knew what to do, but I don't believe that's ever going to happen. Whatever I choose to do with the Universe, there is no way to get an outside perspective on my actions because there is no outside. I don't see any alternative to my simply doing whatever I like. That, as much as anything else, defines me as a god.

If I knew what "The Right Thing To Do" was I'd probably do it in all the dimensions, unless I selfishly didn't want to, but I like to think I wouldn't be that selfish. In the absence of knowledge of "The Right Thing", I'll worry about what I'm doing but I'll have a lot more fun because I'll be able to do many different things all over the Universe, many of which will be done just for the heck of it. All things considered, my families and I are going to have some very interesting times, especially me.

As well has having fun, I want to do a good job of being a god, although that's a bit tricky given that I can't tell what "good" means on the largest scale. On the smaller scale, things which make more people happy are probably good (once again putting me in opposition to the Christian God). Because I refuse to risk breaking Time I will be actively running many large- and long-term experiments to help me determine what makes the most people happy. I admire the Scientific Method and it's going to be put to use on a scale never before imagined. It'll be interesting to come up with many possibilities and to test them.

I'll make sure I memorize snapshots of various w-dimensions' versions of Earth and humanity every fifty years or so, for possible use as templates if I ever want to recreate my species. I'll probably also do that for other species that I become very interested in. Recreating old copies might be preferable to all the choices contemporary to whenever I'm having a problem with humanity, or it's having a problem with itself. The templates might also be useful if I set up a new w-dimension, or simply want humanity to meet itself in some interesting ways, for example, imagine if the first spaceship Earth sent to Alpha Centauri arrived there to find an Earth IDENTICAL to the real Earth but from fifty years before, including younger versions of people who are still alive on the real Earth. I could have some fun with that, especially if I revealed myself as a god and gave some useful explanation for what I'd done, such as, "I believe your rampant greed and political corruption is about to destroy life on your planet, so I've made an earlier copy just in case." That should cause some potentially useful social upheaval.

The several preceding chapters were mostly about ideas I could use on humanity, with this chapter touching on some very large-scale concepts in part to explain why I don't have any strong reason to hesitate in my dealings with humanity. My not knowing what "The Right Thing" is, my suspecting there is no such thing, and wanting to enjoy myself, mean different humanities will be heading in some very different directions. Even with just the single species that is humanity, there are millions of experiments to run over many lifetimes, by which time I'll have thought of innumerable more ideas that I want to test. Then there's whatever I will decide to do with all the Universe's many other species. Evolution has had its uses, but intelligent guidance of life must be a better idea - or will be as soon as I work out what my guiding principles will be. I should give that a lot of thought because guiding the Universe must be a lot of responsibility for an 18-year old boy.

Or is it? Responsibility is something I am imposing on myself, and already I can feel myself being casual about it. There are so many dimensions and I can reset any errors so easily that I don't feel that I have to be ultra-careful before influencing them. Perhaps I'm just excited about all the possibilities, or maybe I'm just lazy and prefer to make it up as I go, but I'm already starting to make things happen on many Earths. I might never make any plans for those Earths, just nudge them from time to time in whatever ways appeal to me at the moment. Is that irresponsible? Who's to judge? What criteria are they judging me against?

^

"Guiding the Universe must be a lot of responsibility for an 18-year old boy" is a true statement in respect of my being an 18-year old boy. I AM a teenager. Admittedly a very powerful one, but currently a very inexperienced one who's very happy to have his families to provide him with guidance.

I'm looking forward to seeing how my families and I develop over the years, centuries and epochs. I can easily make my families' minds larger, more powerful and network them, possibly all the way up to my level of power. I don't currently intend to take them all the way - although I might change my mind about that in the future - but I do intend for them to develop some of the way. They'll have so much knowledge of the Universe that keeping their lives small will likely be dissatisfying for them. We will make a diverse team:

• Prof and I are very interested in science, which will clearly be of paramount importance in the future.

• Ava is interested in nature, which is also of great importance.

• Julia has a natural affinity for management. We're going to be doing a LOT of that in the future. (Yet again I differ from the Christian God: as gods go, He was a truly pathetic manager.)

• Carol is very nurturing. At the moment that just applies to her relationships with us, her best friends, and soon to our babies, but as her capabilities increase, so will her horizons.

• Nevaeh is very interested in art and design. She has described her artistic tastes as "wide", but she ain't seen nuthin' yet! She's going to be amazed at some of the "width" of art that the Universe's creatures create. In terms of her contribution to my pantheon, Nevaeh's perspective is quite different from ours, which will add nicely to the mix (everything she does with us is "nice"). I did momentarily think about excluding her from becoming a demigod on the basis that she hasn't done anything to deserve it, but neither have I. Although Nevaeh's dependency on us would be trivially easy for me to reverse and I could make her happy to return to her family, there's no reason for me to do that. It wouldn't be fair to remove her just because I was more successful than I had expected to be. Besides, my other girls would mutiny, which would make our pantheon all too Greek- and Roman-like.

• Donna is into sports. I can't see any benefit to our pantheon or to the Universe's creatures in that. My having the perspective of a god hasn't changed my opinion on the near uselessness of sports. [I have a theory that sports developed WAY back in prehistory when mankind wandered around in little tribal or family groups. The groups were so small and survival so perilous that 'warfare' between the groups could result in their failure, even for the winners if one or two of their hunters were injured. So mankind invented sport as a way of showing off prowess to discourage injurious conflict: "Our men can throw their spears better than your men, so you'd better leave us alone!" The instinct of supporting the home team is bred into us so strongly because it truly was suicidal not to do it for most of our history. In short: sport is a VERY out of date, unnecessary adult activity, even if it's still instinctively compelling for the primitive members of today's society.] Donna has yet to develop any adult interests, besides sex, and we can't guess what she'll pursue when pointless competitive entertainment ceases to be her main focus. Despite her 'adult' interest in sex, I can't see her as any sort of Sex Goddess since she's too interested in doing it herself to be interested in other people's behavior. Besides, treating her as such a goddess would be applying the classical meaning of "pantheon" too much to us. I don't mean that to be literally true; it's just a somewhat illuminating comparison.

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