Epistemic status: fictional illustrative story - and takeaways 

Sequence: This article builds on Our kind as optionality-optimizing oracles

 

Fiction I: Now

The glory of the sunrise is not beautiful at all. At least not for me. I am cynical and rich with disdain. My day gives me nothing to complain about; I wake up perfectly on time. If I wake up at 6:46:37, I will start my day with the most energy and excitement due to my sleep cycle being precisely completed. I do not check my phone first, I am aware of the news I will find. I do my routine making every movement as precise as a machine. I have done this routine million of times, or it at least seemed so. I left my apartment, a penthouse in New York, in one of the tallest buildings. An obelisk into the sky, some may say like a ray of sun, but I consider it as not a representation of what nature is, but more a representation of how man can beat nature and mold it into what we want it to be. I want to shape this world into what I want it to be. 

And yet, I’m miserable. I walk down the street and grab a coffee and my breakfast, and I’m miserable. Today I have tasks to do that do not make sense to me, but who has a boss that they fully understand? My job is fulfilling, or at least it accomplishes great things, but what I must do is repugnant. I can barely carry these things out each day without stopping. I so want to stop, maybe this is why I am miserable. 

I can’t let my emotions hold me for too long, I continue my routine. Can guess my job? I’ll give you a few clues: I talk to people, move around a lot, I’m saving the world, I regret ever making that deal. Today I went to a laboratory and burned it down; I had no choice but to follow the instructions, ones that I laid out for myself. After I turned decades of research to ash, I was nowhere near done for today. I gave out bribes and told people things they needed to hear, likely breaking up a few families, and by likely, I mean I did. 

I want to stop, but I won’t. When my day ends, I robotically head home. I head into my office, an old muffin laying half-eaten on the table, and I flip over the whiteboard easel to reveal my work. I brandish a marker and check off my tasks, and I get as close to happy as I can be without disrupting things. I am miserable. 

 

Fiction II: Before

“Please, I beg of you”, I demanded, practically on my knees. She pursed her lips; I could see something flash across her eyes. Realization? Maybe, an idea? 

“Are you sure this is what you want? With tomorrow comes the day after, and with the future comes the world. Are you ready for that weight Atlas?” She asks me, as if to challenge me, or as if to genuinely warn me. I pause briefly, not because she got my name wrong (she did), but because she raised a good point. How would things change, which I guess is a question I would soon know the answer to if I got this blessing. I was ready for this; I was ready to be more.

“I am.”

“It’s been a long time since I gave anyone prescience.”

“I will be that new first, that new savior, I will serve people, I will stand up.”

“Very well.” She began to move her hands and mutter, a few moments pass, and she begins to speak once more. “I have bestowed upon you future sight, you are now a seer. This is a gift, yet it is also a burden you must hold.” 

She briefly smiles, as I knew she would, but her smile quickly fades into a knowing pain. My mind races, flitting around between future and now, past and present, present and now again. 

 

Fiction III: Now again

I saw this misery. I saw what I must do. I could have undone this misery. I chose not to; it was already too late. I had seen it. The cataclysm. 

I look back at the whiteboard, a straight line drawn between the first day I had my gift and the day years from now I knew was coming. The world was supposed to end, humans would bring about the end. I saw that moment so quickly, and yet I have spent countless lifetimes just flitting around the various futures seeing how one might prevent it. I continue to look, my efforts are nowhere near complete, but now I have but one option. Every day, I painstakingly carry out every task to prevent this. 

My boss is just the future, of which I am a slave to the only one that I want to see. I have but one choice, do everything precisely the way I ought to, or see the world destroy itself. Every time I close my eyes I see “then”, the future. I see then, but the way I don’t want it to be. 

 

Fiction IV: Then, but the way I don’t want it to be

I watch, with my own prescient eyes the world implodes. This isn’t the most terrifying sight. It’s not what I see happen to those I love, it’s not the thousands of people that get pulled into the void. 

The most terrifying thing I have seen is the nothingness that follows. 

It’s silent. I cannot see any more past here. There is no future. There is no joy. There are no miserable mornings, no waking up at the perfect time, there is simply nothing. 

No one else knows. 

No one can see. 

I wish I were blind to the future. 

I wish I did not have to take every step I did. 

I have but one option, prevent this and live my life in every instant without any choice, or know I am the worst person that might have ever existed. 

How would I live with myself?

I just want it to be then, but the other then, the one where I stop it.

 

Fiction V: Then, but the other then, the one where I stop it

Oh sweet bliss, I’ve saved every one. Until the next cataclysm comes, until the next time I make myself the Atlas who holds up the world.

Is this what the world has become? Is this what my world has become?

Yes, there is no silence, but was it all worth it? I toiled for years, just to stop a thing that when it happens nothing even matters anymore. 

Who was I to stop this, I did terrible things. My duties were dark, and my outcome was simply status quo. 

What did I do this for, what was I thinking then, or I guess now again, again. 

 

Fiction VI: Now again, again

 

The whiteboard seemed futile. If only I never took this gift, I would have lived my life in ignorance, yes, but ignorance gives me pure happiness. I wouldn’t have to meticulously act out each day to follow each step. The butterfly effect is my greatest fear, I can’t make a step out of line. 

I am not a person anymore; I am a force of nature. I am a deterministic element. I will follow this path because it is the one laid out for me. 

Just as the hurricane has no choice in the way it slams against a coastline, I too have no choice. 

Happiness has become my Waldo. I must change this. 

I call her. I can tell the future has already shifted. I can practically hear the crunch of the planet. 

I don’t stop what I am doing. I am selfish, I am terrible, I am dreadful. 

“Please, I beg of you”, I demanded, tears streaming down my face. I could tell something crossed her mind. Realization? Maybe, an idea? 

“Are you sure this is what you want? With tomorrow comes the day after, and with the future comes the world. Are you ready for that weight Atlas?” She asks me, as if to challenge me, or as if to genuinely warn me. I pause briefly, this time for a different reason. I believed the burden to be gone now if I could no longer see. This is not true; I had taken the choice from me. I had removed the option of not being culpable in this. I would always hold this weight, if I forgot tomorrow, I would also forget the day after, and by forgetting the future I am giving up the world. This weight was unbearable. I just wanted to skip ahead to then, but the way it becomes. 

 

Fiction VII: Then, but the way it becomes

The glory of the sunset is so beautiful once more, I can only see one today, and I may only see a few more. I don’t know what way the world will go, but I will make every best decision I possibly can. The weight of the world cannot rest on just one person's shoulders, so instead, it rests on all of ours. We cannot see the future and so we must enjoy what we have. The sunrise before meant nothing, but now each sunrise means more. I was the seer, but now I am something else. Whatever I am now, all I can say is that I see the sunset more than I ever saw it before. 

 

Non-fiction I: Now, but what I have learned

Stories about fantastical powers often illustrate the amazing things that can be done (Marvel’s universe and the amazing new technologies), powers as more excitement and magic in the struggle between people (Harry Potter), or how these powers may be abused (The Boys). The latter is the closest to exploring certain flaws in these fantastical powers we aspire to have, or at least as kids we did. Prescience is an interesting subject as something I felt could be fundamentally torturous. If you apply philosophical models or value systems to this power, you can glean applicable learnings for your own life:

  1. It’s hard to be a pure utilitarian (or consequentialist) or pure deontologist. In this story, being utilitarian or consequentialist is dreadful. You know of the one outcome that will save the world, but the tasks you take on to prevent this are terrible. If the main character was a deontologist then they would never carry out these heinous acts; but then are they complicit in the outcome? Most people likely lie between these two views and would take issue with some outcomes and take issue with some duties. One of my favorite short stories “the ones who walk away from Omelas” is a perfect indictment of utilitarianism for a similar reason. In that story, a city of people effectively tortures a child, and the child becomes the bearer of all negative consequences so that everyone else can be happy. In the fable of the seer, the character becomes this tortured child, bearing the knowledge of great negatives and undertaking negative actions to ensure positive utility (a future). In fact, without the character taking action, it is all the potential future utility that humanity can create that is at risk. 
  2. Prescience is terrible because it removes options. The obvious benefit of the power is being able to create the outcomes you would like to see, but what you give up is so much more than that. To create an outcome, you must sacrifice all the days leading up to that outcome. In the story, he is terrified of the butterfly effect, and rightfully so, as any deviation from the one future path may cause calamity. As such, the choice to save the world has robbed him of all choice. Humans value choices and options greatly. By giving this up for years, the character has no feeling of free will and becomes a slave to the process. The only option he has is to not follow the successful path he has foreseen, becoming instead a slave to the outcome. Whatever he does differently, wherever he deviates, will immeasurably change the most positive future he was optimizing for, and so he becomes at fault (at least in his own head) for what is to come. 
  3. Options are the end. At its logical conclusion, humans must create options for themselves, otherwise, we have no agency. Whatever is chosen must be chosen, but losing choice is painful. If I had prescience but no choice, and then saved the world, I did nothing. Similarly, a person is not virtuous simply for not committing heinous acts, they are virtuous for being able to commit a heinous act and choosing not to. It is the option that gives the virtue, and it is the choice that creates the value. 

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Prescience is terrible because it removes options.

All knowledge does that, even in the everyday world with no Gods or Omegas playing their games. The more surely I know what I want, and the more surely I know how to achieve it, the less freedom I have. Once I make a choice, that choice is gone. I have moved through it and it no longer exists. The imaginary futures of all the things I "could have done instead" are cut off. I never "could have" done them, the moment I saw that they would not lead towards my goal. My freedom is reduced by precisely the amount that I exercise it. Consider the possibilities open to a new-born baby. Compare them with the ineluctable specificity of your present state.

This applies to everything, to the great concerns of one's life and to the small. Observe yourself in the simple act of walking from one place to another. Notice your legs taking one step after another, in total subjection to your goal.

"Do you know what it means to be able to choose so swiftly and surely that to all intents and purposes you have no choice?"

Prescience is terrible because it removes options. The obvious benefit of the power is being able to create the outcomes you would like to see, but what you give up is so much more than that.

That's because you designed the story universe so that there is exactly one way leading to the desired outcome. If there were multiple ways instead, the protagonist would have a freedom to choose between those.

Also, not sure if I understand it correctly, the protagonist must work optimally all the time to achieve the desired outcome (i.e. no free time to e.g. pursue a hobby that is irrelevant to the greater picture). That seems statistically unlikely, too perfectly balanced -- in a random scenario, either the protagonist could take an hour off now and then, or all his time would not be enough.

BTW, despite these objections, I enjoyed reading the story.

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