The automation of work and the meaning of life

Let's assume, for argument's sake, that superintelligence is around the corner and it doesn't kill us? Let's say that what we see, rather, is the end of work. The end of the need for human involvement in scientific discovery (since the machines do it so much better than we do, and anyways, we couldn't understand what they're on about after a certain point, surely?). Let's say that our every need is met, instantly, and completely.

 

Then what?

 

Is that the end of human striving? The end of meaning? Where are we to find meaning when there is nothing left to explore, nothing left to discover?

I think that this worry betrays a staggering lack of imagination. 

 

There are at least two responses to this that we should take seriously (and these are just off the top of my head, so I imagine that there are far more available when we sit and really dig into the question).

 

First - this isn't new, or at least, some version of this isn't new.

Consider the Buddha before he left home - a prince who had every luxury, no material need unmet. And yet there was still something to accomplish - namely, he needed to address the question of his own existence (and through that, the question of all being, so to speak). This wasn't something that simple knowledge could address either - it's a strange mix of knowledge and subjective experience that has to be seen to be understood. This question is always with us, regardless of our environment - and in an environment of plenty, this question comes into even sharper relief than when we have to busy ourselves with attending to basic necessities.

 

Second - when there's no possibility of discovering first, there is still the pleasure of understanding and, through understanding, the perfection of the self. Yes, sure, it must be a really cool feeling to be the first to explore a new field, discover a new theorem, etc. But the majority of humanity has never done this, has never even considered the possibility of this. Most people are probably not even equipped to undertake such work, especially in the furthest reaches of mathematics and physics.

Still, there's work to do - and it has to do with the self. We can imagine new ways for us to live, lean into our particularities, our peculiarities. Our subjectivity is still wide open, regardless of how far AI pushes into areas of external exploration.

 

When all the work is done, there is so much more work left to do. And, arguably, what's left is the most important work there is. 

2024 Roundup

 Every year, I read Fogus' "The best things and stuff of 20XX" posts.

I think they're a fantastic way of rounding out the year, and I've always meant to do something like that. So I'm going to give it a go this year and, hopefully, turn it into a tradition - a way of reflecting on the year, and setting myself some goals.

This year will be a little thin, I suppose, for a number of personal reasons. But that's okay, 2025 is already looking to be, potentially, a lot better.

Best book read

Last year, by far, the best thing I (re)read was John Crowley's Little, Big. I'd been following the publication of the Little, Big 25th anniversary edition since, well, since its inception.

When I first discovered it, I was mostly broke and lived in a place where you could almost guarantee it wouldn't be delivered. Now, after like 15 years, I'm not as broke anymore, and live in a country with a pretty reliable postal service. So when it was finally released, I got myself a copy of this edition of the book.

Pictured here are the 2nd and 3rd copies I have of Little, Big, the first of which I gifted to a very good friend of mine years ago (I also have a kindle version, and the Audible version, Narrated, gorgeously, by Crowley himself).

It's interesting reading a book 15 years after the first reading of it. I thought I remembered it so well, and yet it felt as though I'd never ever picked it up before in my life. I remembered snatches of story, and certain particular lines, but the story as a whole eluded me. Reading it now, having a family, being older, etc. I felt so much more resonance with the story as a whole, I believe, than the first time I read it. Further, the ending ... what an ending. Stunning.

Best podcast

This is a tough one. I listen to two podcasts regularly, Chess Journeys (tales of adult improvement), and Very Bad Wizards.

 

As much as I genuinely love listening to the endlessly fascinating variations of how people got into chess, how they train, what their hopes and goals are (it's a wonderful podcast, and I highly recommend it) - I have to give  this to Tamler and Dave.

VBW is really listening to two really smart guys talking about cool shit like film and books and papers. I never get the sense that they're arguing in bad faith, or think that they're better than anyone. And they're funny, really funny.

More than once I've been running, listening to their podcast, and one of the guys will say something that makes me laugh out loud, and giggle spontaneously for the next half a kilometer.

Writing roundup

After, literally, years, I've started writing again. And this has been a really interesting year.

So - first. There was actually a pretty big publication. A comic/graphic novel of my story "Brand new ways (to lose you over and over and over again)" came out in October.

It's in Italian, so I can't read it - but it's pretty.

Let's just give a set of numbers for the rest, though:

 

Short stories sold: 3 (2 of them reprints)

Short stories written: 3 (none sold)

Novels written: 0

 

Goals for 2025

• Write at least five new short stories
• Write my grade 5 guitar exam
• Record an EP with my daughter
• Pick up at least two new technical certifications in areas I'm unfamiliar with.
   

Notes on Todd May's "Should we go extinct"

 I just finished reading Todd May's short book "Should we go extinct: a philosophical dilemma for our unbearable times", and thought it would be useful to me, if nobody else (really, this is just for me) to write up a short reflection before I forget everything.

It's the kind of book that one might consider to be "pop philosophy" - in the sense that, there are arguments presented, but they're not particularly rigorous. I'd love to read some of his other work on this.

The question is important, and it's an important enough question to merit this kind of treatment. The more people thinking about this, the better.

 There's a lot of focus on what we might consider environmental philosophy, or at least the kind of philosophy focused on our relationship with the environment. This seems reasonable, but it's pretty narrowly focused, and I would've liked to have seen a broader treatment.

 Given it's length, and how entertaining it is, I'd recommend the book for anyone looking for a philosophical beach read.

Things I took from the book

I think his discussions of utilitarianism and happiness in general was useful. He revisits pretty well trodden discussions about the deficits of utilitarianism generally, about how it's not obvious how we're supposed to trade off the experiences of happiness of animals (which, arguably, are of a "lower" type than those available to humanity) with ours. 

1. I do think, though, that the absolute horrors of factory farming should be enough to shock us out of our moral stupor. This is probably what I was missing from the argument - a discussion of our moral emotions (and not just because it's my interest). We should be disgusted by this.
2. To my mind, it's not really a question (or not only a question) of weighing happiness vs suffering, but rather the question of whether there's kinds of suffering that we inflict that are such that we should be ashamed of our existing. The horrors that we inflict on all animals, our environment, etc. are important.
3. I don't think that May is unaware of this though, I think it's probably a harder argument to mount in some ways. In fact, I think what I'd like to see is something that he'd likely consider as one of the ways in which we shouldn't approach the question. Still, I'd have liked to have seen more made about the question of what kind of animal we are, given we are so happy to exist in a world in which this kind of thing happens. 

 

 I also thought that he could have given a little more attention to human suffering. The kinds of evils we visit on each other, the casual violence and racism, war, indifference, etc. that's so prevalent in humanity. Still, perhaps he doesn't need to deal with this to make his case. But for me, the nature of humanity seems to be the most important thing when it comes to the question of whether or not we should continue to exist. This is related to my point above, of course, and may count as a way we "shouldn't" argue this question, according to May. Still, it's the thing that bothers me.

His discussion about Love is fascinating - different philosophical accounts, and the question of whether love would exist without humans (seems it would, given the evidence). I'd really love to dig into this a little more.

The other thing I'd like to look at is Samuel Scheffler's work on "Death and the Afterlife" - really about the significance of the continuing of humanity past our own lives, and the significance of that. If I recall correctly, Scheffler's argument suggests that the value we find in our own life is somehow contingent (or made more valuable) by the notion that there will be ancestors - that we fall in a continual chain of humanity. Something May doesn't seem to address is the kinds of continuity that might follow us and the significance that has to our lives we live now. If I know that the future will hold a utopia where all humans populate the universe Star Trek style, benevolently exploring the stars etc. etc. I will feel like the value of my own life is bolstered by such a future. But if I extrapolate from what I see now, that's certainly not the future I imagine. The character of our descendants have to matter to us.

Perhaps this last point isn't fair - he kind of does deal with this, just not in the way I would. He speaks of "attitude" of future generations - that is, it seems more justifiable for humans to continue to exist if these descendants have the "right attitude" - that they are stewards to nature, care in the right ways etc.

TBSFotY vo1 - McGuire "Hello, Hello"

 Seanan McGuire's "Hello, Hello" was initially published in the 2015 anthology "Future visions: Original Science Fiction Inspired by Microsoft". The text is helpfully online at Lightspeed.

I don't have very much to say about this piece, to be honest. It's not that it has anything wrong with it, I think it's a perfectly good bit of science fiction, it's more that it doesn't have the same kind of emotional resonance than some of the other pieces in the book so far. 

I do think that it presents domestic very well - I recognize a lot of what's presented as being absolutely true. That's really good stuff.

I do think I learned something from it though - there's a kind of magic to the mystery at the heart of the story (which I can't summarize without spoiling the story). Part of what makes the story interesting is the mystery that needs to be solved - but, something for writers to keep in mind is that a story that relies on this kind of reveal, where does the re-readability come from?

In McGuire's story, I think there's some compelling family dynamics that might be cool to revisit, but I'm less likely to reread it than I am Miller's "Calved" or even Shoemaker's "Today I am Paul" where the personal is, at least in my reading, explored in a much deeper way.

This may be, though, because what we're presented with in these two other stories are families at a crisis point -- whereas the family in "Hello, Hello" is actually pretty well adjusted.

TBSFotY vo1 - de Bodard "In Blue Lily's Wake"

 Aliette de Bodard's "In Blue Lily's Wake" appeared in the 2015 anthology Meeting Infinity (ed. Strahan). The text is available to read at Uncanny.

The story is, roughly, that a young girl takes a journey on a so-called "mindship" knowing that she's infected with a disease, the "blue lily" of the title (after the bruises that bloom on the bodies of the infected). In doing so, she knowingly risks the lives of the humans on the ship, but what she (and humanity in general) doesn't know is that mindships are also able to be infected.

Almost everyone, including the ship succumbs to the disease. 

The girl, Tich Tim Nghe, who has the ability to see alternate realities, devotes her life to helping others relieve themselves of the burdens of their pasts, while at the same time, being trapped in her own. Her guilt at what she did making herself a prisoner on the dead ship, she being her own jailer, refusing to consider a life outside of what she's done.

The other strand of the story is that of Yen Oanh, a member of an organization devoted to researching/understanding blue lily, on the one hand, and providing support to victims of the disease on the other. They are a kind of one-stop-shop though, seeming to also have a policing aspect to them.

She has returned to the mindship's corpse 11 years after the first time she was there. Yen Oanh was, at the time of the mindship's death, deeply affected by all the death she saw around her -- and because of her perspective at that time, when she could have helped Tich Tim Nghe by offering her comfort and support, she chose not to, as she saw the girl as deserving of punishment, or at least guilt, given the fact that she knowingly boarded the ship with the disease, and was therefore responsible for the deaths of the crew and the ship itself.

Yen Oanh is, herself, like Tich Tim Nghe, haunted by the past -- now, 11 years after she refused to help the young girl on the ship, she has returned to provide solace, or comfort, or the truth.

The truth being that without the girl getting on the ship while infected, there would be no vaccine for blue lily -- despite the fact that she had inadvertently killed the passengers and ship, this also prevented the death of countless others.

The story is really about two characters, both haunted by the past - both needing to make things right.

What I thought, what worked, what I learned

I've yet to isolate it, but there's something about the prose that I find difficult to parse. To be clear, this isn't that I didn't like the writing, it's genuinely beautiful, but there was something about it that my brain found difficulty in parsing. It may have been the unfamiliar world, but I had to slow down to really understand what was going on. It also didn't help me (again, this is actually not a criticism) that there were multiple realities and memories all swirling together in the text.

BUT, I took this effect to at least be intentional - the "delirium" -- actually the seeing of alternate realities -- that blue lily victims suffer is also characterized by this kind of shifting.

What I learned from this story, though, and what really impressed me was that every single thing that was said about the world felt like it was justified by a world that was fully realized.

I felt as though de Bodard has justifications for everything they said, regardless of whether the justification appeared in the text or not.

That may have also partly explained my initial feeling of the text resisting me - perhaps something like the feeling I get when I'm reading history. Here is a real world, with substance and culture, etc.

Once I "got into it" things started going a lot smoother for me.

Brilliant piece of fiction - I'd love to read more of this world.

TBSFotY vo1 - Chen Quifan "The Smog Society"

 Chen Quifan's "The Smog Society" was published in Lightspeed in their August 2015 issue. It was translated into English by Ken Liu and Carmen Yiling Yang. The text of the story can be found at the Lightspeed website.

This, again, is the kind of story I love. In it a very human, very personal drama plays out against a SFF background - the same kind of thing as we saw with Miller's Calved.

The story is a slice of life of a man who spends his, rather lonely, retirement gathering data for a group known as the "Municipal Smog Research and Prevention Society" also known as the "smog society".

The "Smog Society's" concern is an ever present fog that hangs over the city that seems to be implicated in a range of maladies.

Though his travels through his city -- beautifully represented, I must say -- we learn a few things.

We learn that he -- and practically everyone else in the city -- is depressed, in some way or another. We also learn that he has many regrets, chiefly the way things panned out with his wife -- how he let their relationship sink into a mire of indifference and silence (at least on his part). Finally, through the researches of the "Smog Society" we learn (and this is the science fiction, I suppose) that there is a deep connection between the smog and human feeling -- the smog and human unhappiness are in a mutually reinforcing relationship, the more people feel down, the more smog gathers, the more smog gathers, the more it affects them.

Anyone who has any experience of depression itself will recognize the smog's effects:

[T]he most immediate consequence of smog was the sense of removal from the world. Whether you were dealing with people or things, you felt as though you were separated by a layer of frosted glass. No matter how hard you tried, you couldn't really see or touch.

 

This notion of distance, of being unable to touch and feel and see is repeated on practically every level in the story. It's in the story of Lao Sun and his disintegrat(ing/ed) marriage, it's in the way that people cannot see or speak to one another, in the way that the smog makes the rest of the (still beautiful) world invisible.

I genuinely loved the way that this kind of metaphor played out at different levels.

There is also clearly a political aspect to this -- which I'm not qualified to speak to, but it's there.

I found the sections of reminiscing on his marriage to be powerful and beautifully done.

What's interesting, finally, is that the first time I read the story a few years ago, I found the ending interesting, somewhat charming, but a little meh. Thinking about it a second time, though, I feel a lot better about the ending - Lao Sun's taking up the role of the clown is, in fact, a radical and rational act in a lot of ways. In bringing happiness to people, he's explicitly taking up the fight against the smog, he's acknowledging hope, and engaging directly with people. Bridging that gap.

Great story.

TBSFotY vo1 - Dickinson "Three Bodies at Mitanni"

The third story in Clarke's first Best SF volume is Seth Dickinson's "Three Bodies at Mitanni", originally published in the June edition of Analog.

I really enjoyed this piece - it's philosophically complex, bringing in questions of decision theory and consciousness and ecological competition. It's all very cool stuff to think about.

I have to be somewhat hands off on this though, because it veers into philosophical territory that I've spent a lot of time in, and I think that a lot of the underlying philosophical arguments feel as though they won't stand up to sustained scrutiny - but that's not what I'm trying to do in this series of blogs.

I don't have very much to say about it beyond that though - it's fairly well written, but the prose isn't as clear as I like, this is more a question of preference for a certain prose style on my part than a failing of the writer, who is clearly very good.

 The dream sequence, I thought, was very effective in conveying background information.