So to you, then, it is humanity that molests kittens.
He should have foreseen this possibility, after the experience of the Babyeaters. If the Babyeaters'
existence was morally unacceptable to humanity, then the next alien species might be intolerable as well - or they might find humanity's existence a horror of unspeakable cruelty. That was the other side of the coin, even if a human might find it harder to think of it.
Funny. It doesn't seem that bad from in here. ..
"But -" Akon said, and only then became aware that he was speaking.
"'But'?" said the Lady 3rd. "Is that your whole reply, humankind?" There was a look on her face of something like frustration, even sheer astonishment.
He hadn't planned out this reply in any detail, but -
"You say that you feel our existence as pain," Akon said, "sharing sympathy with our own suffering.
So you, also, believe that under some circumstances pain is preferable to pleasure. If you did not hurt when others hurt - would you not feel that you were... less the sort of person you wanted to be? It is the same with us -"
But the Lady 3rd was shaking her head. "You confuse a high conditional likelihood from your
hypothesis to the evidence with a high posterior probability of the hypothesis given the evidence," she said, as if that were all one short phrase in her own language. "Humankind, we possess a generalized faculty to feel what others feel. That is the simple, compact relation. We did not think to complicate that faculty to exclude pain. We did not then assign dense probability that other sentient species would traverse the stars, and be encountered by us, and yet fail to have repaired themselves. Should we encounter some future species in circumstances that do not permit its repair, we will modify our
empathic faculty to exclude sympathy with pain, and substitute an urge to meliorate pain."
"But -" Akon said.
Dammit, I'm talking again.
"But we chose this; this is what we want."
"That matters less to our values than to yours," replied the Lady 3rd. "But even you, humankind, should see that it is moot. We are still trying to untangle the twisting references of emotion by which humans might prefer pleasure to pain, and yet endorse complex theories that uphold pain over
pleasure. But we have already determined that your children, humankind, do not share the grounding of these philosophies. When they incur pain they do not contemplate its meaning, they only call for it to stop. In their simplicity -"
They're a lot like our own children, really.
"- they somewhat resemble the earlier life stages of our own kind."
There was a electric quality now about that pale woman, a terrible intensity. "And you should understand, humankind, that when a child anywhere suffers pain and calls for it to stop, then we will answer that call if it requires sixty-five thousand five hundred and thirty-six ships."
"We believe, humankind, that you can understand our viewpoint. Have you options to offer us?"
(4/8) Interlude with the Confessor
The two of them were alone now, in the Conference Chair's Privilege, the huge private room of luxury more suited to a planet than to space. The Privilege was tiled wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling with a most excellent holo of the space surrounding them: the distant stars, the system's sun, the fleeing nova ashes, and the glowing ember of the dwarf star that had siphoned off hydrogen from the main sun until its surface had briefly ignited in a nova flash. It was like falling through the void.
Akon sat on the edge of the four-poster bed in the center of the room, resting his head in his hands.
Weariness dulled him at the moment when he most needed his wits; it was always like that in crisis, but this was unusually bad. Under the circumstances, he didn't dare snort a hit of caffeine - it might reorder his priorities. Humanity had yet to discover the drug that was pure energy, that would improve your thinking without the slightest touch on your emotions and values.
"I don't know what to think," Akon said.
The Ship's Confessor was standing stately nearby, in full robes and hood of silver. From beneath the hood came the formal response: "What seems to be confusing you, my friend?"
"Did we go wrong?" Akon said. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't keep the despair out of his voice. "Did humanity go down the wrong path?"
The Confessor was silent a long time.
Akon waited. This was why he couldn't have talked about the question with anyone else. Only a
Confessor would actually think before answering, if asked a question like that.
"I've often wondered that myself," the Confessor finally said, surprising Akon. "There were so many choices, so many branchings in human history - what are the odds we got them all right?"
The hood turned away, angling in the direction of the Superhappy ship - though it was too far away to be visible, everyone on board the Impossible Possible World knew where it was. "There are parts of your question I can't help you with, my lord. Of all people on this ship, I might be most poorly suited to answer... But you do understand, my lord, don't you, that neither the Babyeaters nor the Superhappies are evidence that we went wrong? If you weren't worried before, you shouldn't be any more worried now. The Babyeaters strive to do the baby-eating thing to do, the Superhappies output the Super Happy thing to do. None of that tells us anything about the right thing to do. They are not asking the same question we are - no matter what word of their language the translator links to our
'should'. If you're confused at all about that, my lord, I might be able to clear it up."
"I know the theory," Akon said. Exhaustion in his voice. "They made me study metaethics when I was a little kid, sixteen years old and still in the children's world. Just so that I would never be tempted to think that God or ontologically basic moral facts or whatever had the right to override my own
scruples." Akon slumped a little further. "And somehow - none of that really makes a difference when you're looking at the Lady 3rd, and wondering why, when there's a ten-year-old with a broken finger in front of you, screaming and crying, we humans only partially numb the area."
The Confessor's hood turned back to look at Akon. "You do realize that your brain is literally hardwired to generate error signals when it sees other human-shaped objects stating a different opinion from yourself. You do realize that, my lord?"
"I know," Akon said. "That, too, we are taught. Unfortunately, I am also just now realizing that I've only been going along with society all my life, and that I never thought the matter through for myself, until now."
A sigh came from that hood. "Well... would you prefer a life entirely free of pain and sorrow, having sex all day long?"
"Not... really," Akon said.
The shoulders of the robe shrugged. "You have judged. What else is there?"
Akon stared straight at that anonymizing robe, the hood containing a holo of dark mist, a shadow that always obscured the face inside. The voice was also anonymized - altered slightly, not in any obtrusive way, but you wouldn't know your own Confessor to hear him speak. Akon had no idea who the
Confessor might be, outside that robe. There were rumors of Confessors who had somehow arranged
to be seen in the company of their own secret identity...
Akon drew a breath. "You said that you, of all people, could not say whether humanity had gone down the wrong path. The simple fact of being a Confessor should have no bearing on that; rationalists are also human. And you told the Lady 3rd that you were too old to make decisions for your species. Just how old are you... honorable ancestor?"