From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Wed Dec 20 2000 - 11:54:22 MST
Nicq MacDonald wrote:
>
> Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote:
> >
> > Oh, great. A bloody chaos mage in nanotechnology. Sure. That's *all* we
> > need.
>
> You'd better believe it. Peter Carroll forsaw the coming of the
> "Sorcerer-Scientist"- well, where do I sign up for the job? Playing with
> particles, studying quantum mechanics and non-linear dynamics, and building
> microscopic devices of joy and terror is right up my alley. Maybe I can
> finally figure out how to *really* polymorph someone into a toad and animate
> the dead... but I'm getting a few decades ahead of myself. I have to start
> with the basics first. Transmuting lead into gold can wait. (and, in
> today's economy, who would want to do that anyway?)
==
"Disciple of Another Sect"
(c)2000 by Eliezer S. Yudkowsky.
I stood at the altar, as he stood at the doorway, my students spread
between us like lines of magnetic force. I'd been expecting this, but
that didn't make it any less saddening, or frightening. One year ago,
he'd been trying for the same style he affected now; black clothes, black
headband, black fingernail polish, ice-blue contact lenses, and a spiked
metal earring. The clothes were still black, but they were real leather,
professionally tailored, dyed so black that he moved like a hole cut out
of the world. One year ago he'd been another pretentious novice. One
year ago he'd been my friend.
"Jonathan," he said, nodding graciously. "Still searching for power, I
see?"
I didn't want to do this, I didn't want to do this... "I've found power,
Berel. I continue along the path. I can't do the things you can, but
what I can do is real."
In answer, he lifted his hands toward me, spread his fingers. Lightning
crackled along them. It was a simple trick, the hands of his new body
lined with conductive fibers... but it was the dream, the unspoken
childish fantasy that had brought my students here. "Show me your power,"
he said.
I swept my hands to indicate the whole room. "You can see the ritual that
is performed in this place, the power that is being summoned," I said
quietly. "You were of us, once, and you may watch if you wish." It was a
straight line for his next attack, and I knew it. I needed some Zen sting
to put him in his place, some clever defense to win back the minds of the
watchers...
"Raising power," he said. "I was here for that, Jonathan. I remember. I
remember that I felt empowered afterward. I don't remember a demon
tearing through the walls of reality. Show me something obvious,
Jonathan. Show me something that even I can't rationalize away."
It was a tiny opening, but I drove at it. "You can rationalize anything
away if you wish, Berel, like all the others -"
"Rationalize this!" he shouted, and a cold wind began to blow from him,
slowly at first, then rising to gale force as he rose into the air.
Ballast, I thought, stored under high pressure to add weight to a body
that was naturally lighter-than-air, then released from pressure and
allowed to flow outwards. Change the volume of a gas and the temperature
changes with it. He had transformed himself into a floating
air-conditioner... I clung to the humor of the thought. He could defeat
himself with these party tricks, if enough of my students saw through
them, if enough of them had the education, but those students were more
vulnerable to him in other ways. For a moment I regretted encouraging
them to study the sciences, but then angrily rejected the thought. Magic
was real, as was science, and I was a seeker of truth, not a con man. I
would die before I believed otherwise.
His arms were spread from his body, his legs crossed at the ankles, toes
pointed downward, as he floated like a crucified devil. "Nobody can
rationalize this," he said. "Nobody can say it's not real. Did you ever
wonder if maybe there is real magic in the world, Jonathan, and you don't
have it? If that's why you can't levitate a pencil or predict a coinflip,
after all these years? If maybe all the talk about patience and
immaterial forces are no true part of magic, while the students of some
other discipline transform wood into iron after their first year? It's
what you'd expect, after all. It's what's described in all the books.
The sorcerers you told me about didn't tell themselves how empowered they
felt, they conjured demons!"
"The one thing I am certain of," I said, staring into his unreal eyes, "is
that if there is real magic in the world, you do not have it. Your tricks
are not an answer to that, and you know it."
His hands collapsed to his side. His feet dropped to the ground. "There
is no magic in this world, Jonathan," he said. "And I don't need to dream
about power when I have the reality." He turned, walked out the room.
Three of my students stood up, walked after him. The others stared at me,
at the door, looking lost, or cheated.
"Nanotechnology has no soul, Berel!" I shouted after him.
His voice floated back. "It works."
==
-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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