My first quibble is that if you’re used to a triple-omni God, the fellow in the story is a pathetic excuse. He dodges the question of whether he’s God in his home universe. He has a lot of power, but he understands our universe on such a broad statistical level that he can’t or won’t use it in detail. The same goes for omnibenevolence, only more so.
I wouldn’t mind growing up to be the likes of him, and thinking that one is more important than one is seems to be pretty common among humans and might be conserved, or claiming such might be an intelligence test that the human failed.
I’m an agnostic—if it had been a “Yay, agnosticism” story rather than a “Yay, atheism” story, it would have been more like “I’m probably the nearest thing to a God you’re got”.
I don’t have a strong opinion about evolving to be invisible-to-humans energy beings. I don’t think living organisms of that sort are supported by current physics, but it’s plausible that strange things will be found to be true, and it’s definitely good enough for a story.
Not a quibble—the idea that methods of destroying the human race will be found which can be used by individuals fits neatly with my spam variant of the Fermi Hypothesis. It’s natural for Fermi to have been concerned with atomic war as a filter.
I think Ben Franklin would have been delighted at the idea of what adds up to a high proportion of individuals having home printing presses and effectively free post offices. I don’t know whether he would have thought of the more negative implications.
Spam has been put pretty much under control, though the social cost of spam is high. If it weren’t for spam, we’d have email directories, and I don’t think the cost of communication which has been indirectly blocked by protection against spam is especially low.
I’m not looking forward to the effects of home virus kits, and I believe they’re just a matter of making current scientific tech cheaper.
Do you think the God would claim omni-benevolence? I didn’t get that impression. In fact, I’m not sure that the entity would even claim benevolence. As you implicitly noted, that begs the question why to name it God.
The character in the story makes it clear that It (presumably not really a He) isn’t omnibenevolent—my point was more that calling it God is a dubious use of the word.
I had a little difficulty suspending disbelief at the entity bothering to contact anyone for such silly nonadvice, but I quickly realized that this wasn’t really relevant to the story. The exact same story could have easily framed the same content as an omnipotent future Humanity looking say back on its history and all the other species that didn’t make it. There is a bit of a yay atheist vibe as knb points out, but I’m ok with that since I can stand literature I read occasionally going “why yes you are more awesomer than other people (who probably aren’t reading this)”.
It is a warm tale, one that almost cheers me up and reminds me of the early enthusiastic optimism I had for transhumanism as a teenager, before I started to deeply contemplate some of the more likley and much less pleasant outcomes.
My first quibble is that if you’re used to a triple-omni God, the fellow in the story is a pathetic excuse. He dodges the question of whether he’s God in his home universe. He has a lot of power, but he understands our universe on such a broad statistical level that he can’t or won’t use it in detail. The same goes for omnibenevolence, only more so.
I wouldn’t mind growing up to be the likes of him, and thinking that one is more important than one is seems to be pretty common among humans and might be conserved, or claiming such might be an intelligence test that the human failed.
I’m an agnostic—if it had been a “Yay, agnosticism” story rather than a “Yay, atheism” story, it would have been more like “I’m probably the nearest thing to a God you’re got”.
I don’t have a strong opinion about evolving to be invisible-to-humans energy beings. I don’t think living organisms of that sort are supported by current physics, but it’s plausible that strange things will be found to be true, and it’s definitely good enough for a story.
Not a quibble—the idea that methods of destroying the human race will be found which can be used by individuals fits neatly with my spam variant of the Fermi Hypothesis. It’s natural for Fermi to have been concerned with atomic war as a filter.
I think Ben Franklin would have been delighted at the idea of what adds up to a high proportion of individuals having home printing presses and effectively free post offices. I don’t know whether he would have thought of the more negative implications.
Spam has been put pretty much under control, though the social cost of spam is high. If it weren’t for spam, we’d have email directories, and I don’t think the cost of communication which has been indirectly blocked by protection against spam is especially low.
I’m not looking forward to the effects of home virus kits, and I believe they’re just a matter of making current scientific tech cheaper.
What do you think about the details of the story?
Do you think the God would claim omni-benevolence? I didn’t get that impression. In fact, I’m not sure that the entity would even claim benevolence. As you implicitly noted, that begs the question why to name it God.
The character in the story makes it clear that It (presumably not really a He) isn’t omnibenevolent—my point was more that calling it God is a dubious use of the word.
I had a little difficulty suspending disbelief at the entity bothering to contact anyone for such silly nonadvice, but I quickly realized that this wasn’t really relevant to the story. The exact same story could have easily framed the same content as an omnipotent future Humanity looking say back on its history and all the other species that didn’t make it. There is a bit of a yay atheist vibe as knb points out, but I’m ok with that since I can stand literature I read occasionally going “why yes you are more awesomer than other people (who probably aren’t reading this)”.
It is a warm tale, one that almost cheers me up and reminds me of the early enthusiastic optimism I had for transhumanism as a teenager, before I started to deeply contemplate some of the more likley and much less pleasant outcomes.
The affect I get from it reminds me of the one I get from the last few lines of The Gift We Give To Tommrow