The Reason
"I finally figured it out."
"Figured out what?"
"The reason why everything sucks. Things just go wrong too often."
"Maybe the reason is entropy?"
"Good guess, but not bad enough. The truth is always worse than you think. No matter what we try, our plans almost never work out like they should. Things ALWAYS take longer than calculated. Case in point the F-35 fighter jet development process."
"Ah, human nature."
"Worse still. As the world's most pessimistic person, I'm interested in how and why things go wrong, no matter how unpleasant the answer."
"Well why do things go wrong?"
"Simple. It's because what many people would call 'magical beings' keep stealing most of our luck."
"But . . . how could luck ever be stolen?"
"Someone is 'transferring' a large part of the available order in our environment to make statistically unlikely events happen elsewhere. In other words, high-order potential energy is being redirected into magic."
"Is that even possible?"
"With quantum physics anything is 'possible'. Someone must have figured out a mental trick; a way to connect to a future version of themselves who inhabits a universe in which a desired unlikely event took place. Then other people did the same trick. Inevitably, they combined their future realities into a single integrated multiverse, a 'magical world' in which they secretly control the flow of entropy. This world appears absurd on the face of it, but it's fully consistent. We all live in it, though we don't know. The rest of us must suffer a lower quality of life as a result."
"Who are these bastards? Why have we never even heard of them?"
"Let me put it as gently as possible. They call us muggles."
The Onteleological Drive
A curious yet undeniable fact is that most humans in existence have not the slightest connection to planet Earth.
Most humans in reality (almost all in fact) evolved independently on other worlds throughout the Macrocosmos and the Multiverse beyond.
They are forever out of reach. Finding fellow humans who evolved independently would take as much effort as creating their entire civilization from scratch.
The nearest planet inhabited by aliens that look exactly like humans is unimaginably far beyond the edge of the observable universe.
Even then the resemblance would be superficial, only a first impression. Everything that can be different will be different.
Their expressions and way of speaking, their values, attitudes and emotions would be completely unrecognizable, as alien as any nonhuman aliens.
The nearest planet with aliens that are exactly like humans in a moral and mental sense is also unimaginably far away.
In that case, their appearance would be incredibly different, but their minds and society will be completely understandable.
No matter how far our descendants spread through the universe, they will never find either of these worlds - let alone a world with independently evolved identical humans
The only way it might happen would be if faster-than-light travel turns out to be possible. There might just be a second theoretical exception to Einstein's laws, beside tachyons: faster than light travel might be almost infinitely fast, so the speed violation can't be observed.
A faster than light drive might immediately take a spaceship outside the observable universe, to another area that happens to be almost but not quite identical.
In that case, Star Trek and Star Wars will become really possible.
Moment
"The aliens are still far away, but they're already partway here."
The homeless man lying on the stretcher was alone, but he seemed to be having a real conversation.
"They don't arrive all at once. They just become more and more present over time. It's like they're merging into reality among us."
I slid to the end of the bench to listen in. The man had to be delirious, but he spoke clearly. Was he dying?
"Unlikely events slowly become more likely. Low probability outcomes are amplified as things get stranger."
If you ignored his words, he sounded completely sane. I took my phone out to record the exchange.
He didn't know I was there, but suddenly I felt as if I had been maneuvered to be here.
"The only way they can come through is by becoming us."
The Important Ones
There were lifeforms circling the event horizon of the black hole, spinning around the collapsed star thousands of times per second.
Species of rapidly evolving "Flyers" inhabited the inner accretion disk in an endless whirlpool catastrophe.
Their only goal was to gain enough energy to spread slightly outward and survive a few moments longer. Eventually all would fall and be replaced.
To live their intensely brief lives, they had evolved immensely powerful flowing brains that dwarfed the combined brainpower of all humans.
They were fanatically focused on nothing else. Outside observers still doubted they were sentient.
No greater effort had ever been expended for a smaller prize.
The Ultimate Parasite
The cells were initially called impostor sperm.
Such a sperm infiltrates the egg cell as planned, but then it scrambles the genetic machinery, imposing its own DNA on the resulting embryo.
This doubles its genetic advantage.
Some impostor sperm can also penetrate Fallopian tubes, and convert existing egg cells.
The offspring can look different than the parent at first. They may even have the surface appearance of both purported parents, and a fake personality to go with it.
The eventual result will be a world of rival clone types.
The Ring Universe
All matter in the observable universe must eventually be combined into one artificial structure.
The Universe will become a single, immensely long cylinder, spinning at close to the speed of light.
This is inevitable no matter how future history may develop. Intelligent life is just an extension of physics.
We don't know exactly how long this cylinder will be, or if it ever ends, but we do already know its angle and location.
By the purest coincidence, the earth is aligned to intersect its future axis in thirty-one years.
There's no time to properly explain. We will have to work harder than anyone ever imagined.
The Accumulation Future
Imagine an immense museum filled with all your stuff. Every single item, every document and all the data you produced.
It extends into separate wings for all your past and present interests. Beyond are further extensions for everything you would have been interested in.
Such a museum can only be created in virtual reality. The only way you could go there is to become virtual yourself. Then you would never want to leave.
The unattainable purpose of life is to achieve perfect stability. This could only be achieved through eternal improvement.
What makes each museum unique are the vastly more numerous elements of reality that are not allowed inside at all.
Personal identity requires almost total rejection.
Two Futures:
1. The Nanodust War
The last planet had been broken up for building materials centuries ago. Now the Sun was only surrounded by a spherical cloud made of an absurd number of sub-microscopic machines (over thirty zeroes of them).
They orbited in groups that were magnetically bound. Some were supported by the Sun's radiation pressure.
The nanomachines existed in only a few trillion types, that were arranged in a few quadrillion competing supercivilizations.
Each of these virtual civilizations dwarfed the size and scope of all human history. All hoped to replace each other even as they pretended to cooperate.
In the end, there could be only one type of device in the Solar System.
The Nanodust War would be the only practical way to determine the most efficient type.
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2. The Great Unification
After 7,000 years, the last planet had been disassembled, and the solar system was full.
Now the Sun was surrounded by a spherical cloud of orbiting space stations out to the former orbit of Mars.
Vast multitudes of artificial landscapes and bustling cities existed inside. Human-equivalent beings formed hierarchical group minds, which formed layers of an emergent supercivilization.
It was time to spread out through interstellar space.
Before this immense task could safely begin, they had to do one more thing: create the ultimate religion, the integrated sum of everything everyone agreed on.
They had to become one.
Final answer
Perceptions can come out of nowhere, including the darkest ones.
There may come a sudden feeling or vision of absolute doom with no possibility of hope. Beyond despair, there is absolute corruption.
In that long moment, all is lost.
Strangely, such an insight should not feel that bad. The universe is already almost completely dead.
Complete oblivion or obliteration should mean a complete absence of pain.
Neil Armstrong said he could appreciate the perfect order of even lifeless worlds.
The fear may be the perception of total oblivion, like negative existence.
That seems reasonable. Any true state could be perceived. There must be a possible mind perceiving it.
This brings us to the highest ethical and therefore religious principle in all of reality: the principle of nonexistence.
It may be the highest and simplest truth. Most possible things should not exist (arguably almost all).
Looking at reality as a single digital string, at least half of all possible bits should not exist.
Those are the ones that define, describe, cause pain. All the bit patterns that are associated with involuntary existence.
These bits are spread out evenly throughout reality. Getting rid of them would be exactly as hard as annulling the existence of the even or odd numbers.
That is the highest goal worth pursuing.
Align
Imagine a Multi Level Marketing scheme that really works.
Anyone and everyone could join this "system", and likely come out ahead. It would not always be easy, but always possible.
In the real world, a vast number of people have negative economic utility, like trying to get a possum to do useful work. For many, the only way way to get resources is to steal them - a perfectly legitimate strategy under the laws of evolution.
No solution had ever been found or even imagined, until now.
A single visionary entrepreneur saved the world by making it less efficient.
The Technology Distribution Plan created a mosaic planet. Technology and factories were spread out as much as possible around the world.
Now there were hundreds of airliner designs and thousands of independent car manufacturers. They traded and coordinated innovations and methods in every country, but all were different. In Africa the supply chains were longer than anywhere, but everyone kept busy doing whatever it took to get their part to work.
A less noticed side effect was that with the increased number of subcontractors and loss of secrecy, dangerous technology could not be developed as easily.
Posthuman Cinema
The most complex motion picture of all time was inspired by the Ultimate Trip sequence in the film "2001".
Vast grid-like displays in ultra-high definition flickered through all reality. The immense screen depicted billions of worlds, landscapes and skyscapes, creatures and species, buildings and monuments, unimagined technologies at accelerating speeds.
Thousands of alien things per second, extending beyond the observable universe.
While the initial impression was psychedelic, the scenes were extremely detailed and fully consistent, endless diversity revealing hidden patterns and insights of new symmetries.
The experience was like a story that changes as you read it, the words randomly replaced but remaining consistent through all meanings.
Changes
There are other versions of Earth, just like ours, but with mind science instead of physical science.
To them, the idea that people could have reached the moon in the 1960s is absurd. That is still many centuries away.
Technology is possible, but mostly handmade and simple. Photos are mostly drawings.
But the mind is fully understood.
And while we can never go there, they could sometimes come here.
Their perception of reality can be distorted without limit, to eventually become the perception of our world. Reality will appear to have changed irrevocably.
The hardest part is to remember what happened.
The Slowdown Acceleration
Optimizers don't like change.
Humanity's descendants preferred to live in the eternally perfect present, the most stable state possible.
Described as an Endless Moment simulation, it was the triumph of quality over quantity. They chose to avoid the risks and horrors of eternal expansion through the Omniverse. Once you have everything you want, change becomes dangerous.
This goal is a strange attractor for all human-level minds.
For Optimizers, each small improvement takes longer to achieve. Progress decelerates exponentially, but they become extremely good at self-defense.
To become an Optimizer, you must first define your true self, your metaphorical control level. The best imaginable optimization of your ideal self.
Like any gravity well, it's possible to miss this target and pass it at high speed.
Beyond lies the infinite expanse of all other possibilities, the freedom of radical chaos. Testing all possible patterns to find what works bets, specializing in none.
Through the infinite darkness, the Multipliers were spreading.
Read Infinite Thunder by Jack Arcalon.
Far too far ahead of its time.
More original scientific, sociological, and technical ideas than any science fiction novel ever published.
Original source of the Anonymous meme.
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