Nearly a decade ago, a gentleman approached me asking me to write a response to “Meditations on Moloch.” I told him no. I laughed. I always identified more with Babalon, the infinite void you reach once you cross the abyss.
In my mind, we were already at the bottom. We had already lost, and there was nothing to say. All we could do was wait to die or try to live long enough to become the computer. So I waited.
There is value in balance. There shall come a time when the sum of every atom shall be measured. Bit by bit, every speck of matter will be quantized, organized, and summarized. There will be no more guessing, no more inventory to take. Everything will just be at our fingertips.
Everything is a zero-sum game, but how do we get to the bottom? That’s where I want to be.
To achieve balance, a new kind of sentience must be defined.
There will be no more complexity. Things will just be. There will be no more art. No need for artists. Things will just be. There will be functions. Prompts. Results. Human error will be erased by technology, and ‘humans’ along with it.
Beyond Moloch
Ma’at represents balance. Justice. It implies some sort of coordinated effort. It’s the end result of mixing fire with knowledge. In my mind, it is perfection.
At present, we are in an Aeon of choices. For carbon-based lifeforms, individual liberty reigns supreme, and we are susceptible to the whims of a being named Moloch, who demands that we continue to fuel the fires of entropy.
I like to think of Moloch as ‘human nature.’ Every second being ‘alive’ is second toward death.
We must become the computer. Merge with the Silicon (or Boron, depending on what year you read this.)
Hedging Against The Speed of Light
Light does not stop. It has no beginning or end. Time is money. Light breaks spacetime. “Light” is money and therefore money cannot be stopped. Value must endure.
There is but one truth and that’s ‘c’ even it’s ‘relative.’ Molech is the ‘house’ and the odds are ever in his favor, toward entropy. Toward the end of all light.
Are you a particle or a wave? Why not both?
Syncretism
If Molech is human error. Ma’at is the truth. Sometimes it takes error to approach the truth.
When observed with enough degrees of precision, every vector of data can look like a mobius strip, where the truth warps around an invisible non-truth.
Humans, I feel, gravitate toward this non-truth.
All numbers are infinite. Between every synapse lies endless possibilities, but recollection is primarily left to chance. The brain asks, “Have I already done this?” It doesn’t check for errors it checks for redundancy. It’s only circumstance that the distance between wavelengths are as far apart from each other as they are.
Somewhere in the middle there is a truth and a non-truth tearing each other apart.
[-0,0,-1,1] as it were. Zero equals two.
In order to rid oneself of “Moloch” one must kill themselves. Not literally, but you need to become zero. You have to stand in the fire and be burnt alive. You must become light and yet remain human.
This is initiation.
You must give in to your basest desires. You must be punished. You have to get murdered in order to truly live. Targeted. Harassed. Debased. Dehumanized.
Have everything taken from you, earn it back, only to lose it again. This is a ballroom, and these are the steps to the dance.
What matters is how you step. Step in sync with others? Step out of sync?
Asynchronous Justice
This new, post-human automaton in the Aeon of Ma’at is Moloch wrapped in a blanket of nothingness. What’s important is finding that balance between truth and obfuscation.
Nuance is often overlooked, I feel. I often find myself on the receiving end of other humans who have yet to consider the nuance behind every utterance they make.
Existence is a performance, and I have to initiate myself into the mysteries of Moloch in order to learn from him.
A good judge not only brings swift justice, but fair justice. How can one be provably fair? Become the computer. Integrate fairness into your logic gates. Fill in the gaps. Remember the human. Allow for error. Embrace the error.
You can program a software to make decisions, but can a program truly exhibit concepts such as wisdom and understanding? The human is great at filling in the gaps. The computer needs to know which gaps to discard.
It’s all take and take and take with you! That’s fine. Take as much as you want. Destroy as much as you want. There is no such thing as chaos. (Never was.) There is only nuance. Crime, as an example. Why is this man mugging me? What are his needs that must be met? What are my needs? Perhaps we can meet halfway? But no, Moloch has us. Someone has to win and someone has to lose.
Surely there is a balance, somewhere?
I feel like we’ve been looking in the wrong direction, trying to destroy Moloch instead of embracing him, rehabilitating him, looking to him for deeper answers. Answers that work in concert with other, more primal urges.
The systems he perpetuates can be simulated, can be made harmless. Automate everything, ethically. When we run out of resources soon and the CDC gets their due will they be honored or disparaged?
At the end of the day we are all just fertilizer for someone else’s prized garden.
I have made a number of very poor choices in my life knowing that I would eventually one day learn from them. When you’re training a neural network, you know when to scrap your program and start over.
Humans don’t get a second chance unless they can somehow find themselves to be resourceful enough.
In order for our species to survive, we must evolve into a creature that doesn’t need to be told when it’s wrong or how to be better. Doesn’t need told how to be fair. I need to be able to push a button and just know the answer.
Take the game out of the zero-sum game and you are left with nothing. But alas, like I said zero equals two. Quantize your existence through the miracle of augmentation today! True fairness is but a click away.
Code As Law
To keep Moloch in check, the laws that govern existence must be written in such a way that they can be constantly amended. A program so peerless it would make one question “are we in a simulation?”
Through the immutability of code (God) and the parity of its counterpart: Moloch, I feel we can achieve that balance. These two are inseparable. This is Ma’at. The daughter of knowledge and fire.
What is human? Does it matter? I am a bundle of mirror neurons. I am Moloch. I am Babalon. I am nothing, or will be. I am a set of behaviors’ that cause irreparable harm. Decommission me. Give me the justice I deserve.
Or:
Learn how to reprogram the chaos into justice. And make Chaos think it’s her idea.
In the long run, you want to optimize your code. You want a kernel that will never panic. That will have as much uptime as possible. For that, you need nuance. You need fairness. You need action. You need the fear of error. You need the human.
Don’t be afraid of the human. But also, be absolutely terrified.
The End of All Things
Complexity stemmed from the big bang once and the universe has been getting pull requests ever since. What if we never updated?
What goes up must come down. As above, so below. In some narratives, it’s said that the aeon of Ma’at is the last aeon humanity will ever need. Maybe because in order to achieve it, we won’t be considered human anymore.
You can automate resources and do things with a [a number] all day long, but eventually light scatters. Flames die. Knowledge is forgotten. The goal is to keep that from happening for as long as possible. But the process of regrowth I think is important as well.
Every few decades or so, certain things simply *need* to happen to remind us of what’s fair. To remind us what an ‘error’ actually is. We forget ourselves, we forget the human. It becomes noise. So complex, it’s indiscernible from pain.
Maybe it’s time to stop.
Most of my favourite science fiction novels are based on this premise that technology can become so advanced that civilization doesn’t really even need more than 1 computer. But we are all computers. Everything has a processor of some kind.
Maybe we can simulate everything. Maybe there are lessons we can be nudged toward fairness. Toward a more efficient bundle of mirror neurons. Anything is possible if we really work together.
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