Let's Read: Where Be His Quiddities — Jordan Chase-Young

I hate dealing with stories that don't say exactly what they mean. Every fiction-reading is a struggle to cut out the author's nonsense words and get to the place where words mean instead of merely happen.

The worst offenders are parts where people make expressions and speak with their personal idiosyncrasies. It's a story, an idea-container, not a psychological sketch, so cut them out!

Today we read Where Be His Quiddities (Jordan Chase-Young, 2020), and cut out all the humanistic crap, and leave behind only the ideas and meanings.

There are three main humans in the story: Steve, Dan, Geoffrey. They were professors of economics. The story starts.

Steve wrote a popular book on ems (The Age of Em by Robin Hanson). He was talking with Dan and Geoffrey. 

Dan: “The problem with your prediction is that elites would never allow their power to fall into the hands of billions of brain emulations. As soon as they see this tech coming, they’ll pull the brakes on it.”

Steve: “If the elites in Europe had known the industrial revolution would lead to democracy, and with it their downfall, could they have stopped it?”

Dan: “That’s not the same thing.”

Steve: “Sure it is. Civilization’s a Darwinian equilibrium. No one calls the shots. If a technology can be invented it probably will be, unless everyone coordinates to stop it. And global coordination is really, really hard. Look at nuclear weapons or carbon emissions or intellectual property. And the economic incentives for ems are at least on par with those of the industrial revolution. We’re talking a hundredfold increase in the doubling rate of the economy. That’s a doubling every month. The people on the ground floor of this thing would become trillionaires pretty much overnight.”

Geoffrey: “Oh, come on. You can’t really think this future’s desirable.”

Steve: “More than desirable. The lack of pain and grime alone would be worth it. Everyone would be healthy and beautiful and strong.”

Dan: “And overworked, It’s still a Malthusian world you’ve got here.”

Steve: “It’s true ems will have to work a lot to pay for energy and hardware. When copying yourself is dirt-cheap, the population’ll grow until the cost of running copies is equal to their labor. But they’ll be selected for work ethic. They’ll like working.”

Geoffrey: “By definition, work is the stuff you wouldn’t do unless you’re paid for it.”

Dan: “The ems will be slaves.”

Steve: “Slaves don’t have a choice. It’s work or die for slaves. But ems can always slow to a cheaper clock speed.”

Dan: “You could make hell sound nice. No wonder Silicon Valley loves you. But it’s still a good book. And if you’re right, the ems will be honoring your uploaded cryo-brain a hundred years from now, while me and Geoffrey feed worms in the ground.”

Geoffrey: “That’s assuming your wife Natasha doesn’t talk you out of cryonics. Something I’ve heard wives have occasionally been known to do.” 

Steve: "I have convinced Natasha to sign up as well. Also, look at this." 

He pulled back the sleeve to reveal a metal bracelet with a red caduceus and big block of red writing. Geoffrey leaned in to read the words: MED. HX. CALL NOW 24 HOURS 800-555-0167. IN CASE/DEATH SEE REVERSE FOR BIOSTASIS PROTOCOL. REWARD A-2471.

Steve: “If I die, the paramedic is supposed to call this number, and the cryogenic company sends people here to freeze my brain. It’s three hundred dollars a year, but long-term members get a discount. I’d be effectively immortal once they upload my brain, so even a 1% chance of immortality is worth the price.”

Steve went home and met Dan again.

They went to the lake of Zurich, where Dan told Steve that he has died and been resurrected as an Em, just as he expected.

“Oh my god,” Steve said, studying the flawless movements of his fingers, feeling the perfect texture of his face. His wrinkles and jowls had left him, leaving smooth, youthful cheeks and angular cheekbones. He looked at his reflection in the lake and lost his ability to speak.

Dan: “I'm glad I took your advice. About cryonics. Sorry we had to play a game with you at first, but we can't just give you back all your memories at once. They put me through the same process when they brought me back. Replayed ancient memories. Let me find my way through the maze, little by little, one hint at a time. Turns out the mind doesn’t come back right if you wake it up all at once. Too much trauma.”

Steve sat down and began to sob.

Dan: “It’s okay. It was the same for me when I came back.”

It was just as Steve had predicted in his book. They’d thawed the last generation of cryonics patients first, then worked backward as the technology got better, thawing earlier and earlier generations with more complicated damage. Until they’d reached Steve’s, one of the first.

The day Steve had died, fewer than 300 human brains had been cryopreserved. His revival had been complicated by the glioblastoma that had killed him at sixty-seven. Before the brain tissue could be scanned, the tumor had to be removed with nanosurgery and the structure restored as much as possible.

Dan: “Now you must decide. Em law gives new uploads the right to forego admission to the em world. I can have the admins shut down your emulation for you. Or I can have you put in hibernation mode until a time of your choosing, if you feel your prospects in the future will be better yet.”

Steve: "Would you say the em world is better or worse than I described in my book?"

Dan: “Depends who you are. For workaholics like you and me, it’s a pretty good deal. For ems driven by status, maybe less so. It’s hard to keep status for long in a server-city with ten trillion uploads.”

Steve: "How is the crime rate?"

Dan: "Torture is rare in our city of Longyearbyen: no more than one em per million per economic doubling. Mostly terrorist and insurgent ems that do it. Rarely rogue admins, and never AIs. Biological humans couldn’t hack us in a million years, so that’s not a problem either.”

Dan: "Also, every Em server-city is naturally cold, to dispose of all the waste heat. Longyearbyen is cold, and so are Vladivostok and Kikiktagruk. Also, they might as well be in Alpha Centauri, at our clock-rate. The faster we run, the further away they seem, because communication can only go at the speed of light at most."

Steve: "Humans still exist?"

Dan: “Fleshfolk? Oh yes. It’s a complicated relationship, but stable enough for now. They are basically in retirement and we run the show.”

Questions were rushing through Steve’s mind: "What speed tranche would he be slotted into? How long could the median em compete in the economy before their mind got too brittle? What was the gender ratio of uploads, or the ethnic ratio, or the age ratio? How close were the ems to full automation, and did they have the insurance to prevent mass unemployment when they reached it? How many doublings had the world economy witnessed since his death? Who was the oldest em? How many copies of himself could he afford to make?"

"How will I sell my labor to survive?" He’d always assumed he could pay for his emulation’s energy and cooling by telling stories of the past, if nothing else. Being an antique was his comparative advantage. Catching up on his discipline wasn’t feasible, of course, and contributing scholarship in such a competitive world even less so.

Dan: “It’s normal to be overwhelmed, Steve. You want to know everything. About this world. About your future in it, if you choose to have one. But our time is metered, my friend. We have already spent ourselves into time-debt—your wife and I—ensuring your wake-up was as smooth as possible. There will be plenty of time for answers once you’ve earned your first 100 leisure hours.”

Steve nodded, trying to push down the worry he felt. It was a Darwinian equilibrium. Subjective centuries if not millennia of hard work, earning just enough to keep running. The timeless logic of Malthus that’d governed life from its beginning⁠—suspended only during that 300 years of fever dream between the industrial revolution and the dawn of brain emulations—had come to an end at last, and he was supposed to accept that.

But how much leisure had he needed in life, anyway? Steve was a workaholic. And work in em world would be interesting, if nothing else. He would adapt. So Steve decided to live as an Em.

Dan led him on a boat. They sailed pass all kinds of crazy moons that represent the offices of many Ems, built to suit their fancies. After all, simulated luxury is cheap happiness, so Ems live in simulated, personalized luxury.