“Reinstalling Eden”
by rsbakker
So several months back I was going through my daily blog roll and I noticed that Eric Schwitzgebel, a well-known skeptic and philosopher of mind, had posted a small fictional piece on Splintered Minds dealing with the morality of creating artificial consciousnesses. Forget 3D printing: what happens when we develop the power to create ‘secondary worlds’ filled with sentient and sapient entities, our own DIY Matrices, in effect? I’m not sure why, but for some reason, a sequel to his story simply leapt into my head. Within 20 minutes or so I had broken one of the more serious of the Ten Blog Commandments: ‘Thou shalt not comment to excess.’ But, as is usually the case, my exhibitionism got the best of me, and I posted it, entirely prepared to apologize for my breach of e-etiquette if need be. As it turned out, Eric loved the piece, so much so he emailed me suggesting that we rewrite both parts for possible publication. Since looooonnng form fiction is my area of expertise I contacted a friend of mine, Karl Schroeder, asking him what kind of venue would be appropriate, and he suggested we pitch Nature – [cue heavenly choir] – who has a coveted page dedicated to short pieces of speculative fiction.
And lo, it came to pass – largely thanks to Eric, who looked after all the technical details, and who was able to cajole the subpersonal herd of cats I call my soul into actually completing something short for a change. The piece can be found here. And be warned that, henceforth, anyone who trips me up on some point of reason will be met with, “Oh yeeeah. Like, I’m published in Nature, maan.”
‘Cause as we all know, Nature rocks.
Three Pound Brain 
Love it – got shades of I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream at the end.
Ha! I read that story about 10 days ago. I also bought the game. Sick sick shit.
Danke, Niuqrat.
Mega congrats.
Any word on “THE Something About Mary”? That piece needs to get out there and start blowing people away.
Talking about herd o’ cats – Christ! You’re totally right. I’ve been having quite a bit of success with the argument in my verbal interactions of PoM types of late as well. I’ll try to get back to you this weekend, Jorge. I appreciate your patience.
I’m not quite sure I understand – do they figure a way to exfiltrate the simulation and start hacking the internet? Enough to wrangle control over a RL nuke? I’d once imagined a simulated being ‘out loading’ into an alien, robot body. Standing like a giant over their former world, which is contained in boxes before it.
It does seem pretty cool that nature has a space for speculation (and not just dreary old direct speculation)
one of the more serious of the Ten Blog Commandments: ‘Thou shalt not comment to excess.’
Well, I’m damned then. No wonder my computer is wonky.
Yeah, Stross explores the idea in reverse in Accelerando: we find out we’re in some kind of simulation and post-singularity civilizations are all networking together to start an attack on the level above that’s running us. It’s pretty badass.
Oh yeeeah. Like, I’m published in Nature, maan.
Curses! He’s beyond our reach now! Alarums!!
BTW, how about trying to get this adapted to being a Dr Who script of some kind? That series has been taking up psycho drama a bit more lately – I think it’d be in with a chance!
Loved the story – you have any more like this up your sleeve? Reminded me of the Requiem for Homo Sapiens trilogy by David Zindell – one of the characters creates pretty much the same artificial world as the one you describe. It doesn’t work out so well for him either…
Thanks, Al. I have sketches for dozens of different short stories, and a few in varying stages of completion. But I fear short fiction is the runt of the litter compared to Earwa and BBT.
Lol… Umm… spoiler alert for the Second Apocalypse much ;).
Great story, Bakker. I read Schwitzgebel’s link to the original blog and your narrative response; using fiction to accomplish philosophy is just so damn cool.
Thanks, Mike. I’ve joked to Eric before that he and I are staring across the same fence, coveting the greenness of our respective grasses. He has a number of stories now, which he’ll hopefully pull together into a collection at some point. The dude can write.
maximally cool to the point of cruelty?
That was, dare I say, pretty cool, Frank, thanks for pointing it out.
I really hope he does decide to publish because I get the feeling he’s not even exerting himself with the few pieces I’ve read (which are phenomenal).
Also, God is super-cool because God loves things that are cool. I don’t necessarily agree with it but I’ve argued before a kind of Object-Essence Piety that Euthyphro implies within the constraints of its posited framework.
Pretty sure I could have matched the second part of that story to you even without the byline 😉 . A great read, congrats on getting published in Nature, maaaan!
This was fantastic! I thoroughly enjoyed reading this piece. Thanks for sharing and congrats on the publication.
Thanks, Rob. Glad you liked!