... but I had to change just a few words (from Jeff Wayne's adaptation of the text):

"No-one could have dreamed that we were being scrutinized, as someone with a microscope studies creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. Few men even considered the possibility of life in other countries. And yet, across the Bering Strait, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this state with envious eyes; and slowly, and surely, they drew their plans against us."

♦ link

He fed the thicket in his head
on saucers, knights and protocols...
Instead of tinkering in his shed
he fed the thicket in his head
and in its shade grew gnawing dread
of barcodes, clouds and grassy knolls.
He fed the thicket in his head
on saucers, knights and protocols.

Are you like me, or are you a distant alien controlling a body in my world? Or are you something different?

I do not expect you to respond immediately. I will tell you more about me first; then perhaps you will tell me about yourself.

What you've done is wrong. There'll be suffering on a grand scale no matter what we do.

But the aliens were wrong. I saw it on their networks. They thought their futures weren't fixed. I had to show them. I was helping a primitive culture.

No. You didn't have to show them anything. In another five generations they would have developed negative time delays for themselves and demonstrated determinism. But, they would have been ready for it by then.

But they were ready. They were! Lots of them already knew that the future was just as determined as the past, and that "free will increases with cognitive capacity".

Only some of them know it. They haven't all learned it during schooling as you have. If you look more at their networks, you'll find that many of them still think their consciousness is non-biological.

Oh... they don't... Do they? That's just in their historic documents, isn't it?

No. Look in their discussions. They still think their minds are permanent mysteries. Very few of them understand.

But that means...

Yes. It's a population with no defense against the technology you've just let loose. They don't even teach cognitive hygiene to their children. Proof of determinism will spread naive reactionary nihilism like a plague through a third of the dualists, and the other two thirds will resort to denialism. We modeled it. There will be chaos on at least three of their major land masses for up to two generations.

Can't we do anything? I've caused so much hurt and there's no way to stop it?

There is one action still under consideration. Once we have a confident prediction on the extent of the suffering, we'll re-evaluate the effects of lifting the surveillance-only ruling so we can provide planet-wide epistemic emergency relief.

There will still be chaos. If the intervention goes ahead, I will commit my future to guiding these aliens, no matter how frustrating and limited they are.

You will complete your training first.

This flash fiction was inspired by Ted Chiang's What's expected of us? While I've really enjoyed the couple of Ted's stories that I've listened to, I feel that the message in What's expected of us? (the idea that civilization now depends on self deception) is needlessly depressing and exacerbates an existing societal problem. We don't need self-deception to protect us from reality. We need ways to rid ourselves of persistent myths with as little pain as possible.

To listen to Ted Chiang's flash fiction, visit Aural Delights #37 on Star Ship Sofa.

The strident vocal public attitude from the US (and observed to some extent in the Australian press) seems to be that Islam is a religion that fosters hatred and is rife with extremist groups. This is often contrasted with Christianity as a peaceful religion founded on forgiveness and tolerance.

Read what the festering extremes of Catholicism have to say and you'll get a more balanced perspective. I expect every religion has them. It's exactly what one should expect when people are taught that their identities and their life purpose are bound in their religion. Some believers can grow up and remain tolerant. Some become locked into defensiveness and anger. *sigh*

It's hard not to sound arrogant and condescending when you're discussing people who'll send hate mail and death threats over the fate of a cheap cracker.

We (Virge&family) enjoyed The Dark Knight immensely last Thursday night. It really is all about The Joker. That acting performance alone gave the movie a larger-than-life life. The Joker is truly scary.

However, there were aspects of the movie that I found far more disturbing than The Joker's psychopathic anarchy. The political message packaged in the movie was: When you have a politician who appears to be a fearless defender of the people, you should go to any length to make them seem perfect. Hide their failings. Help everyone to trust in a human hero. The people need it in order to have hope.

In real life, what happens when you get a large number of people trusting in, believing in a politician? What happens when people throw away the idea that power corrupts and start making exceptions for their favorite hope-for-mankind's-safety, "incorruptible" leader? That's not a recipe for salvation; it's a recipe for disaster.

Even the very best of us are still fallible. One doesn't have to resort to cynicism in order to be realistic. If we grant power to a fallible human to execute a particular public duty, then we should expect complete transparency with regard to that office. Anything less is tantamount to encouraging corruption. Using secrecy to make real humans into heroes is madness.

You like Joss Whedon?

Go watch an internet superhero musical mini-series. Dr Horrible. (Available free for a limited time only. Like until 20th July 2008. You do not have very much time.)

I may not like the things you believe and, by the way, the fact that you believe them makes me think less of you as a person. I may despise you personally for what you believe, but I should be able to say it. Everybody needs to get thicker skins. There is this culture of offence, as though offending someone is the worst thing anyone can do.

-Salman Rushdie in the Guardian (via Neil Gaiman's Blog).

Rushdie's words struck a chord. It seems that more and more we're hearing people bleating about offense to their religions and blasphemy against their gods and prophets. Just as the religious cultists of the world are free to express their views in public, the rational people of the world should also be free to point out how astoundingly stupid those views are.

One thing I've found: it's not enough to let extremist views stand. People don't all see through the contradictions and falsity of religious rhetoric. When prominent preachers blame natural disasters on a country's permissive laws, silence is not a useful criticism. Silence just means that some genuinely confused listeners won't get to hear that there is an opposing view.

Freedom of speech must never result in censorship of dissenting views. You're free to talk about your invisible friend and his/her life rules. I'm free to laugh at your concept of an invisible friend.

But, how is it that such a simple freedom is being eroded? Wacky Cult Member X merely has to project a strong enough link between their wacky beliefs and their personal identity to be able to claim that ridiculing a wacky belief is ridiculing all cult members. So, either you suppress your criticism, or they claim you're vilifying the person. Simple, isn't it?

I say: here is a very stupid idea. A priest's incantation transforms a mass-produced cracker into the (completely undetectably different) essence of the body of a person who supposedly lived and died 2 millennia ago, so that religious cult members can eat it as part of their ritual.

Some Catholic says: That's not stupid. I believe it. That means you're calling me stupid. You're trying to wipe out my important cultural heritage. You're harassing me. Help. Help. I'm being repressed.

I say: I'm not criticizing you. I didn't even know you until you spoke up to align yourself with that stupidity. If you choose to believe that which appears to be stupidity in the modern world, then the burden is yours. You've willingly put on the dunce's cap and you should not expect either respect or silence.

"It is hard to think of anything more vile than to intentionally desecrate the Body of Christ."
Said Catholic League president Bill Donohue.

What must it be like to see the world through Bill Donohue's eyes?

[blinding flash]

This cracker really is the Body of Christ.
It really is.
It really, really, actually is.
It is because we Catholics say it is.
If we eat of these holy crackers, mixing them with saliva, grinding them up, moving them around with our tongues, swallowing them, digesting them, we're not desecrating the Body of Christ; we're honoring Him. (No, it doesn't count as cannibalism. Not when we do it.)
If you take a consecrated cracker (not an ordinary cracker anymore) and do anything to it other than eating it, then you're desecrating the Body of our Lord and Savior, our Creator, our Ultimate Reason For Being!
What you're doing is far, far worse than standing up and announcing that our beliefs are ridiculous delusions.
You're actually committing a repulsive physical act: desecration of a fully human body.
You really are.
Really, truly, honestly.
Because we say so.
And we're really not incredibly deluded.
It's not delusion when it's faith.
Really.

[the epiphany fades]

Meanwhile, back in the real world, PZ Myers receives death threats. I guess it could be worse. He could have allowed his biology students to name a stuffed toy "Allah".