(Full VN Cover)
[https://i.imgur.com/T1IOiVW.png]
[https://i.imgur.com/RyDulGT.png]
(At school)
It is the first day of high school. The new year has begun and I can see my classmates slowly starting to form connections. I couldn't care less about any of that. Skip, skip, skip...
(Euclid's Room)
[https://i.imgur.com/g8pbt6E.png]
After a long and tedious day I arrived back home. Closing the door behind me, I enter the room and toss my bookbag at the side, homing in on the object of interest, a package that arrived by mail. I got it last night, and waited until I was rested to set it up. Using a pair of scissors, I cut away the sealing tape of the dull, cardboard mailing box, and took out the smaller box from within with the actual product. The printed image on it depicts a white, glossy sphere, twice the size of a marble. I open the box, take out the marble along with the orb holder, get off the bed I was working on and move towards the desk. I sit myself on the chair and after deliberating for a few moments where to place it: the desk in front of me or the top of the computer case next to it, I decide on the case. Gently placing the orb holder on the rig, I turn on my old computer and get to work downloading the programs necessary to get the orb to work.
[https://i.imgur.com/Ptckfvo.png]
As I work I feel a tinge of nervousness and excitement. An ordinary mid-range GPU that I have in my PC could manage something like 10 ^ 13 floating point operations per second (FLOPs), or 10 teraflops. According to the specs I've read online, the brain core which is roughly the size of a golf ball can manage a staggering 10 ^ 39. As a rough comparison, the human brain has been estimated to be on the order of 10 ^ 15 operations per second. Even if you put all the humans currently alive today that would only roughly add up to the 10 ^ 24 FLOPs. To put it in another way, the raw computational ability of the brain core exceeds the power of all the human brains on Earth combined by a quadrillion (10 ^ 15) times!
And it is in my hands!
Of course I would be excited!
With a few clicks I opened the downloaded app, and stretched my body to let loose some of the tension. Energy pumping through my veins, my focus is solely on the options and the data in front of me.
The core is just a perfectly glossy rock so I can't see any indication whether something has happened by looking at it, but after entering the two keys, I see that wireless communication between my old rig and the core has been established. Exhaling, I stop my typing on the keyboard and lean back in my seat, considering my options. As my thoughts turn inwards, my eyes blankly rest on the corner of the ceiling.
Hmmm...I have a lot of options in front of me now. Since I suddenly have access to so much computational ability it would have boggled the mind of a person even a year earlier, all those old school neural net models I could train myself at a scale vastly greater than before. The thoughts flashing through my mind are those of image generators that can be controlled using text which could be previously only accessed through cloud services. Those are fun to play with. An image that comes to my mind next is that of Go boards, Starcraft and Dota games. Previously impossible for a kid like me, I could easily train an agent for those games using the core. I could then take them online and use them to dab on noobs. I could even make money through that practice.
I leave those thoughts aside. I've gotten into programming for the sake of AI, so I have some attachment to those old school algorithms, but the brain core opens new approaches. The algorithms underpinning the brain have been discovered as well, so it would make sense to use those instead as they'd work better at scale.
Deliberating my options, I finish paying respects to the old, and leave it behind me. As I start to get to the point of my desire, I feel my determination getting firmer.
I haven't been programming for long, but I am pretty good at it, a lot better than my classmates in a way that is highly visible to everybody. I've even started picking up functional programming to prepare for programming these cores and I've come to like it. So as a programmer with some skill, talent and pride, I can respect the opinion I've read by the very same person who made these brain cores.
Programming dumb machines is worthless. The ideal of programming lies in programming your own mind. Programming machines is just a job, while programming your mind is where true power lies. According to him, that is what the aspiration of every programmer should be, but normal people as they inevitably are, they started thinking of their profession as just a job instead of calling. Their merit ends up not being rewarded and they coast by putting in just the bare minimum. Rather than being something they should pursue with all their heart, they start putting in the bare minimum for the bare minimum. This would not be the case if through programming you could develop your own power.
Through the march of time, the games lose their spirit too. They become an escape from the drudgery of the real world. But rather than excitement and adventure in another world, they become a parasite on the user, sapping his time only to enrich the game maker. It ends up being a parasitic circle where the gamers are devoured and the ones making games waste their time causing addiction in their customers. Ideally though, the game should be a simulation that would allow the user to practice and attain power in a safe environment rather than the dangerous real world.
[https://i.imgur.com/ByMZ2b0.png]
Power. That single world grips my heart and takes hold of my being.
[Gnosis check ?? Succeeded]
I look at the core and just for a moment imagine tasking it to train an RL agent on the game of poker for me. Plans as to how to do that unfurl in my mind. The normie line of thinking goes that this would not be my power and that the agent itself would be the one who is good at playing poker. But I found it mind blowing to consider that whether that power is the agents or my own depends on the interface.
[https://i.imgur.com/cyD6T4b.png]
The keyboard, the mouse, the monitor, the rig, having to go through the user interface to interact with an agent...all of those factors serve to create a wall between the programmer and his program. It is extremely easy to think of the agent as an entity separate from one's self. There is a ton of evidence that this is true and not much against it. But as a thought experiment, if the obstacles were not there, if one's mind was directly emulated on a brain core you could take an agent and connect the program to your own. The way that would feel would be like instinct, and interfacing with such beings would be like moving your limbs. In that case the agent would feel like a part of yourself.
But if that is true, the other scenario I've represented where the agent is used on a regular computer and interfaced through an UI shown on some monitor, and manipulated using a script written using a keyboard, isn't the impression given by the sensation in fact false? The neural representations and the functionality of both agents is the same, so why would one be one's self and the other not? Is it not likely the case that the feeling of otherness in the first scenario is the one that the brain falsely constructed?
It was not too long since I've learned of this perspective, but once I did it became a philosophical weapon for me. It served to raise awareness how my brain will create nonsense to prevent me from reaching the correct conclusions that are beyond the obvious.
Not being aware of this makes programming seem like a tedious chore. Without the right belief one can only ever use programming to create machines and serve others, and never to further his own power.
There are different ways of programming and playing games. There are different purposes that those unenlightened cannot even begin to imagine.
...
Drumming my fingers on the desk, I carefully decide to make the next step.
The core in particular has some additional abilities besides its nearly limitless computational power and memory capacity. Since the Singularity has started, the world has been covered by an invisible fog of nanomachines and the core can access it to interface with the brain directly. Right now I am planning on interfacing the core wirelessly with my own brain. This is also the prerequisite for playing the fully immersive virtual games on the core itself. Interfacing with the computer directly is a much more efficient way of using it than the mouse and the keyboard. Maybe it does not really matter too much for programming, but it is a huge advantage in drawing and painting for example. It makes it possible to rip an image from your imagination and translate it straight into an image.
The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
I've only read about it, and I am eager to try it out. My art ability is so mediocre it is annoying. With this, I should be able to punch a few ranks above my current skill level...or at least I would have if art classes didn't rely on old school tools, like watercolors, crayons and clay. I grimace lightly in disgust as I consider the situation. The regular classes at my school still use board and chalk, no way I am going to be able to take advantage of this if it is just school work.
Meh, forget that place. I mentally wave the image of a chalkboard in a classroom away. It is just a tremendous waste of time.
I refocus on the task at hand which is to interface the core with my brain wirelessly. I spend some time reading the manual and seeing how easy it is to make the brain link in the relevant section, I decide to move forward with it. In the Conversions tab, I select the Basic Two-Way Link option and after spending some time reading the disclaimer, I press accept. Usually I’d never read the disclaimers, but this one will be making physical changes to my various brain areas to make it capable of wireless communication, so I am curious as to what it has to say. The company Rajnet does not assume any responsibilities for damages caused by the transformation procedure or due to the use of the link, but reiterates that the procedure itself is perfectly safe. It says the link isn’t powered by my biology, but the nanofog, so the use of it won’t increase my energy consumption. That is good.
'Basic Two Way Link conversion in progress: 0%...'
I idly note that there is a Full Brain Conversion option there as well. What that would do is turn my own brain into one of the brain cores, in effect digitizing me. I have no desire to try that out yet. It is not strictly necessary. Once I have the link, it would actually be possible to copy the entirety of my neural representation to the core that I just bought. But...I'll leave dwelling on the philosophical implications of that for later.
'43%...'
The conversion process is pretty fast, I think only around half a minute has passed by this point.
'67%...'
I haven't detected any changes yet. I lightly tap the desk with my finger in nervousness as I watch the progress bar tick towards 100, my focus fully upon it.
'80%...95%...100%.'
On the desktop monitor it says, 'Conversion complete. Opening the neural UI.' It is hard to describe in words what happens next, but it is like gaining a whole new sense.
Two windows open in my vision, a status window on which I can see a diagram of my brain as well as a welcome window with some text. They are not overlaid over my vision even if it feels that way. It is like taking my hand and putting it over one of my eyes, so that one of my eyes is watching the monitor while the other is seeing only the hand. When you focus on the monitor in such a position the hand seems translucent, but is nonetheless present in your vision. The brain loosely overlays two distinct images.
Shutting my eyes, I confirm this hypothesis. Amongst the retinal glow the two windows are right there, and I can see them start clearly in the plasmodic darkness of my vision. On mental command I try moving them around and zooming them in and out.
Wonderful. Even though this is the first time I am using the core, interacting with the UIs feel very seamless and much easier than the mouse and keyboard. The way they respond to my will feels like magic, so I spend some time tossing them around in my mind as if they were cards.
Afterwards I move to reading the Welcome screen. On it there are some instructions on how to manage the OS. I've already read that online while waiting for the core to arrive so I close that as well as the status window.
Phew. I got the thing to install. Next you might expect me to...
"Euclid, lunch!" I hear my mom calling me from outside the door.
"Coming!" Not wasting time, I get up from my seat and leave the room.
---
I am back. Let me resume the important bits. As I was saying, you might expect me to dive straight into VR games, but even if the core is capable of simulating whole universes to a realistic detail, the realism of it becomes a problem in itself. If I were to gather all the objections to, or rather issues with the post-Singularity style of games, it would come down to...emotional control.
...First of all, unless I digitize myself, it is not possible to speed up the time I spend in simulated environments. I could speed up the environment, but not my own thinking speed due to the inbuilt limitations of the biological human brain. The brain core itself uses almost no energy. It is so efficient it does not need batteries and had my mind been running on it, I could easily increase my speed of thought to the physical limits by about a factor of ten million.
So imagine I spent my time as a human in the world of Skyrim except it being realistic in scale. It'd literally spend months of my life just walking around.
Then there is the battle. Battles are fun when you have hit points, don't feel pain, and can heal from bullets, arrows, blades and fireballs by taking a nap. Once it becomes realistic you need literal superpowers to make it viable. According to the reviews of people who have experienced the games already, the adventuring life is made of pain and tedium. Killing one's enemies is easy when they are NPCs, but when they are simulated to human levels of intelligence, their emotion becomes infectious. That bandit you would not hesitate to end in a RPG, now has an entire life history behind him. What do you do when you raise the blade and he starts begging for his life, spilling tears and saying he only became a bandit because his village burned down and he would starve to death unless he robbed. And then starts praying to god and talking to his deceased family, saying he never wanted to steal.
I remember seeing one such video on Youtube. The reviewer gave him some gold and sent him on the way. When he got back to the guild to report, he got reprimanded. He responded by getting out of the game in rage and never playing it again. In the review he says he was bitter to spend a week of real time walking around only for things to come to this.
[https://i.imgur.com/af46a83.png]
He tried some episodic games where he fought in a gladiatorial arena, which was more fun, at least once he figured out how to control the pain and has gotten used to losing blood, limb, and life. His conclusion was that killing and fighting effectively requires some measure of psychopathy, and the game was pushing him in that direction. The game required him to kill, so he used a program to make himself less emphatic. The game required him to withstand pain, so he adjusted his emotional reaction to the pain itself. The game required him to control his fear and withstand the tedium of protracted battle, so he reshaped his personality to be more fit for the task at hand. He required extreme focus to win, so he gave himself that.
An image of a double bladed being swung at a high velocity towards my face by a bald, muscled gladiator popped into my mind, and the feeling accompanying it was negative.
According to the reviewer, a month of that was a very interesting experience and changed the way he perceived the world.
The core has an interesting capability to control the user's mind. More than just being able to extend and hijack the senses, it is possible to use a program to control one's own emotional valence.
For example, for people who cannot lose weight and maintain a proper diet, it is easy to use the core to lower the enjoyment of eating and increase the displeasure of overeating. Addiction to drugs and alcohol are easy to suppress, or induce using it.
I am excited about trying out that mind controlling capability of the brain core.
The main difference between the pre-Singularity and the post-Singularity era is the ability to program one's own mind, and as a programmer I want to step beyond programming stupid machines to programming my own mind. That is where the true power lies.
So as ridiculous as it is, I am going to have the core help me study.
It makes sense if you think about it. Learning is ultimately proportional to motivation.
I had always been a decent student, but towards the end of last year my grades were all over the place. At some point I simply started thinking of my teachers as robots just going through the material without any sense or reason, as if they were cogs in a machine. There was no purpose to what I was learning, and the only incentive to learn was that my grades would factor into getting into university which would affect my odds of getting a job. That kind of nonsense.
If I let myself get swayed by that sort of reasoning I am going to get yanked by other people for my entire life, sacrificing my time in the present for something I don't even want in the future.
Rationally, I can agree with the above. But at the same time, do I also want to go through the entirety of high school at the bottom of the class, literally spending the day sleeping on the desk? The material might be a waste of time and useless, but unless I am going to outright quit school, why not enjoy the game? It certainly makes more sense to live like that, rather than being bored all the time. School work is chaos and discontent, but this kind of self mind control would make it bearable.
Let me give it a try.
Getting up from my seat, I turn on the lights in the room, and grab a textbook from my bag. I seat myself back at the desk, and with a mental command open the application used to control my mental state. The manual states that it is dangerous to just make myself happy for no reason, but instead that I should combine that with a real world goal. I do some research on how to improve my studying, and begin reading the book. At first it is interesting, but the more I read the more boring it gets. Then I put the app into action. Configuring my emotions with the help of the core, I get rid of the boredom and feel myself getting into the flow state, similarly to how it is when I am gaming or programming. It is quite pleasurable.
I do that for a couple of hours, until it is time for dinner, and finish the day like that. That night, I dreamed a Dream.
~~~
[https://i.imgur.com/ejycF9z.png]
In the vast darkness of space, I could see figures as specks of light. The voice of their desire echoed through the abyss. It was their lament.
"Oh Lord, even though we have such desire...and such will..." Their voices boomed.
"Why do we submit when challenged? Why do we accept cowardice into our hearts, and the primacy of reality?"
"Should not our desire and our will...be enough to exceed the bounds called talent?"
As I moved closer to where the figures were, I could see tiny golden threads criss-crossing the scene.
"Those with talent, those with grace, those power, those with wealth..."
"Those with skill..." It felt as if the figures were looking upwards and the contrasting black and white imagery was that of beautiful women and rich men in places high above where they could not reach. The central figures who were smiling were surrounded by adoring crowds.
It felt as if the golden figures were envious of what they could not reach.
"We desire to reach and exceed those above us..."
For every successful person there were ten failures looking onto them as a part of the background. He could see how in the imagery of success not all in the crowd were looking at the central figures in adoration. Some of them had looks of resentment, of envy and frustration. Those served as the seed of hatred towards themselves and the world.
"We desired to defeat them, and we had the will to put in the effort..."
"Yet, we could not succeed..." Endless images of disappointed, frustrated faces flashed past me as I moved closer to the figures in the abyss. In the last of the images I could see their fists lying at their sides, clenched in frustration.
As I got closer to those figures I could see that those golden threads were paths the figures were walking on. In the silence, in the abyss, they continued moving forward...
~~~