The transhumanist response to Lovecraftian horror is to say that if single-celled organisms can evolve into humans, then we can evolve into something that rivals Cthulhu, and then into something that rivals Azathoth. Cosmic scales are not immune to exponential growth. We may be puny now, but the stars can still be ours.
The Lovecraftian rebuttal is—besides “good luck with that”—to say that it may be impossible to become something-that-rivals-Azathoth without losing what makes us human, not in some boring “power corrupts” way or bioconservative “dysentery gives life meaning” pearl-clutching, but in the sense that we may live in a universe fundamentally incompatible with human values. We know that our moral systemsfall apart at the tails, and it’s possible that there is no way to resolve them, that once we are in the position of having to answer questions operating at the scale of “should the universe be turned into hedonium” or “1 human vs. 10^100 shrimp”, there is no choice we can make that is not monstrous in the eyes of our human ancestors.
The horror lies not in the fact that we are powerless compared to the Outer Gods—gaining power is a solvable problem, if not an easy one. The horror lies in the much worse possibility that everything we love and care about will turn out to be irreconcilable with reality.
I have some semi-serious proposals for reconciling this problem, but that deserves more thought and its own article.
This isn’t especially relevant, but I’ve started to occasionally notice that some snippet of song lyrics unintentionally could be interpreted as being about rationalsphere ideas if taken completely out of context, and your comment reminded me of one such:
But can you make the difference? Are endings set in stone? A band of wayward strangers can’t stand up to gods alone So what could you become, then— But not lose who you are? And will you stop before you go too far?
Make your move and change it all Forevermore
(From Make Your Move by Aviators; there’s 2 slightly different versions of these lyrics starting at 1:09 and 2:59)
The transhumanist response to Lovecraftian horror is to say that if single-celled organisms can evolve into humans, then we can evolve into something that rivals Cthulhu, and then into something that rivals Azathoth. Cosmic scales are not immune to exponential growth. We may be puny now, but the stars can still be ours.
The Lovecraftian rebuttal is—besides “good luck with that”—to say that it may be impossible to become something-that-rivals-Azathoth without losing what makes us human, not in some boring “power corrupts” way or bioconservative “dysentery gives life meaning” pearl-clutching, but in the sense that we may live in a universe fundamentally incompatible with human values. We know that our moral systems fall apart at the tails, and it’s possible that there is no way to resolve them, that once we are in the position of having to answer questions operating at the scale of “should the universe be turned into hedonium” or “1 human vs. 10^100 shrimp”, there is no choice we can make that is not monstrous in the eyes of our human ancestors.
The horror lies not in the fact that we are powerless compared to the Outer Gods—gaining power is a solvable problem, if not an easy one. The horror lies in the much worse possibility that everything we love and care about will turn out to be irreconcilable with reality.
I have some semi-serious proposals for reconciling this problem, but that deserves more thought and its own article.
This isn’t especially relevant, but I’ve started to occasionally notice that some snippet of song lyrics unintentionally could be interpreted as being about rationalsphere ideas if taken completely out of context, and your comment reminded me of one such:
(From Make Your Move by Aviators; there’s 2 slightly different versions of these lyrics starting at 1:09 and 2:59)
I will be darkly amused if Luminous/Dark Integers turns out to be an accurate model of the moral (if not mathematical) universe