White Mirror: One

Nathan Dileas

meta note; I made sure to eat dinner before writing this one so that I am not hangry.

reading guide

q1

“I was told I can do anything if I believe” - some things do not come true no matter how hard we believe in them. But anything that DOES happen requires us to believe in it FIRST. How do you balance this? When is too much belief dangerous? When is NOT enough belief dangerous?

I disagree that belief is required for events to happen. In fact, I think the most painful times come from a unbelieved event slowly becoming believed. Miscarriage; unexpected death; car crash.

To me, the thing which springs to mind when I read this story is love, and all the ways the desire for it go awry. If I just keep going on dates, someone will love me. If I could only bench 300, someone will love me. It's sad little mythmaking, which we usually call lying to ourselves. ⊕ Of course, I'm happily married and have never opened a dating app, so maybe take this with a grain of salt. But at least the boy is trying! My worst instinct is always to give up. Trying is neccesary. This is maybe a poor analogy, because if someone could comminicate love via html the world would probably look a little different.

Both these errors are bad. But I see way more people in my life harmed by disillusionment than belief. Cynicism is the spirit of the times.

q2

Were our hardwiring reversed, what would humanity look like? What would we see?

It would be incredible. Trash, traffic, terror - gone. Defense, crime prevention, all the zero sum work we do, gone.

And can we do that, and how?

Well, that's the question. More good things in the world, less bad things. Less salience for bad things. The world is already pretty amazing for many people, but they can focus on the bad and inhabit kind of a personal hell in the middle of heaven. Proof of the good. Unfakeable signals of cooperation and kindness. ⊕ I think my partner would veto a forehead tattoo of "I COOPERATE IN PRISONER'S DILEMMAS" or knuckles of "ANICE GUY!!". So many symbols of love have been corrupted or forgotten.