Looping Wor(l)d

I’m currently in a turbulent reading phase, while I keep delaying Bakker’s last stretch. I started a number of different books, resumed Janny Wurts only to go back and re-read the first 100 pages of book one, slowed down on Michelle West but still going, started again with Gene Wolfe, this list could keep going for a while. Then I went into sci-fi phase, meaning I started looking into stuff, especially what’s considered interesting in the “hard” category. Eventually narrowed it down to:
– Greg Egan, Permutation City
– Peter Watts, Firefall (Blindsight + Echopraxia)
– Alastair Reynolds, Revelation Space

Read some 20-30 pages of each to get an overall feel. Greg Egan convinced me enough that I decided to backpedal to Quarantine and Axiomatic. This last one is a short story collection, so here we are.

But as I said it’s a turbulent phase, and that means my way of coping with recent events has been to once again starting to read Atlas Shrugged. And I really like it. It’s still a fascinating read, the writing has a strong sense of purpose and it matches well the whole philosophical theme. On that front she succeeded, and it makes for a compelling read.

My attention is obviously on the subtle (?) points where the whole thing falls apart, when it comes to meaning and truth. I think she does a good job shaping a believable antithesis. The starting point of view is Eddie Willers, and what defines him is being a neutral point. He observes and perceives some disturbing changes. Something is in motion, but it’s on the outside. He himself represents a sort of stability: he does “whatever is right”, and “he thought it self-evident that one had to do what was right; he had never learned how people could want to do otherwise.” […] “Simple that things should be right, and incomprehensible that they weren’t.”

The antithesis in this chapter is James Taggart. His physical description already establishes a not-so-neutral stance for the writer, but let’s ignore the unsubtle parts. What the writer wants to establish here is a scenario where there’s some problem (a railroad not functioning) and there’s a very obvious path to solve it. James Taggart is elusive, that’s the whole point. He circumvents the solution and makes excuses. “They never seemed to be talking about the same subject.” This is a critical line, because it’s used by Ayn Rand as a fault, and yet it can also turn the whole thing around…

But here comes Dagny Taggart, who represents “the hard, exhilarating pleasure of action.” An obvious counterpoint to James, who’s always indecisive, always stalling, always unfocused. But James makes some good points:
“We ought to help the smaller fellows to develop. Otherwise, we’re just encouraging a monopoly.”
“I don’t see why we should want to help one man instead of a whole nation.” Countered with: “I’m not interested in helping anybody. I want to make money.”
On the matter of using a new alloy that has never been tested: “The consensus of the best metallurgical authorities seems to be highly skeptical.” Countered with: “I studied engineering in college. When I see things, I see them.”

For all the calls for “objectivism” it seems that the whole evidence is founded on lapses. Every time we backtrack the causal chain we find that objectivism in this book is rooted in subjectivity. We have two counterpoints in this chapter, one is Rearden, the maker of this new metal, and another is Ellis Wyatt. Both of them are enshrouded in mystery: “Ellis Wyatt’s father had managed to squeeze an obscure living to the end of his days, out of the dying oil wells.” The oil wells are dying, but: “now it was as if somebody had given a shot of adrenalin to the earth of the mountain.” “He had discovered some way to revive exhausted oil wells and he had proceeded to revive them.”

“Some way.”

I don’t remember if later on these positions are given some substance. I think there’s more detail about the Rearden Steel, so I’ll see when I get to that part. But for now all the “movers” are of a magical nature. And that’s where the philosophy falls apart. Same as it happens with a magical trick: information is withdrawn. The magician catches your attention and focuses where he wants it, while hiding a meaningful move, so that you end up with the experience of an impossible contradiction. But there never was a contradiction, you just missed some data. A piece of the picture was hidden away.

So we’re back, “they never seemed to be talking about the same subject.” Because James Taggart understood (in this re-enaction of thesis and antithesis) that things don’t exist in isolation. The world is connected. When Dagny states that “I want to make money”, despite the blunt, brave intent, is the fact that such an answer begs the question. It never stops there. Money isn’t a thing on itself. The fact that she’s in a position where she can make money, isn’t a thing on itself. There’s always “another subject”, not because of evasiveness, but because of depth. The whole moral and practical stance here is superficial, and it works only because it’s fiction. It’s a book. Therefore what is lapsed is completely absent.

We’ll see where it goes, but for now it aligns fairly well with my belief that capitalism is “fiction.” It’s a moral justification that exists entirely on omissions. On focusing the attention on some aspects while deleting others. It’s a fictional construction because it’s a selective perception and description of the world. It’s an artificial, self-serving reconstruction, that will eventually crash itself against reality. As someone said: “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”

The book still has a long way to go. This first chapter simply repeats the same trick of mistaking action for knowledge. But since this is a book, and the writer has complete control on the knowledge within, then action can be made to appear equivalent to knowledge. No questions asked.

But this post is supposed to be about Greg Egan short story :)

In some way, the premise of the other book I started to read, “Permutation City”, is close to the short story here. In both we’re dealing directly with a kind of multiverse. The difference is that in Permutation City it’s built of simulated copies, whereas here it’s an actual multiverse of possibilities that is made concrete by the existence of a drug, “S”:

One thing never changes: when some mutant junkie on S starts shuffling reality, it’s always me they send into the whirlpool to put things right.

Whereas Permutation City is immediately focused on the moral implications and conscious perception, here it’s all brushed away to try chasing the rabbit down the hole, and see what’s on the other side.

18 pages in total, the story is very straightforward even if the context very vague. “The Company” is some kind of institution trying to keep some order, and the occasional appearance of these “whirlpools” caused by dreamers who take that “S” drug, and causing reality to fragment and spiraling out. The assassin has the task to put this chaos to an end, by going right into the eye of the storm. All the movement of the story is about statistics: maximizing chances of success after colliding with a fragmented reality.

The problem for me is that, similar to Ayn Rand, if you will, if you backtrack the causal chain you get to the same magical point:

The human body somehow defends its integrity, and shifts as a whole far more often than it should. The physical basis for this anomaly has yet to be pinned down – but then, the physical basis for the human brain creating the delusion of a unique history, a sense of time, and a sense of identity, from the multifurcating branches and fans of superspace, has also proved to be elusive.”

With one point given away to magic, the other wasn’t successful for me either. It turns around a mathematical concept I’m not familiar with, “a set of measure zero.” It is explained through examples a couple of times within the story, but I haven’t pinpointed an actual meaning to it. This is the problem of math, understanding what IT MEANS is very hard. It seems to be a subtlety about an exceedingly rare event, that when considered within the context of infinitely possibilities becomes true, but only in “a set of measure zero.” Which means nothing to me. I only catalogue it as a discrepancy between abstraction and reality. A set of measure zero in the context of statistical approximation, rather than accuracy.

(My problem is that one side the assassin manipulates events through procedure, on the other side the dreamer counters with infinite computation. But as the ending reveals, there are no winners. I don’t understand the “weighting” of chances within the context of infinity… In theory neither should have tried that hard, because the context would have already explored all alternatives. The self, meant as intentional stance, would have been brushed away. There is no choice when all choices are being enacted at the same time.)

But what did it all mean? I’m not sure I understood. From the very beginning I wasn’t totally on board with the strategy of maximizing success. Because, intuitively, in a world of infinite possibilities, not a single one “matters.” There’s a disconnection between the self and the context, something that is explored really well in the first few pages of Permutation City. Here it all seems to degenerate into a sort of fatalism. We get to observe one of the infinite assassins, within one of the possible worlds. I’m not sure what’s revelatory about the last two pages in the story.

It seems the crisis between the dreamer and The Company is always absolute, in the sense that there’s always a balance. Which is how the story started:

At first, those alter egos who’ve developed the skill are distributed too sparsely to have any effect at all. Later, it seems there’s a kind of paralysis through symmetry; all potential flows are equally possible, including each one’s exact opposite. Everything just cancels out.

Here with a trailer.

I guess it’s a journey, and this is one starting point.