
The Egg - mickgiles
http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html
======
chroma
I guess I'm in the minority that doesn't find this story uplifting. The memory
reset is the biggest problem, since it doesn't allow the main character to
learn from his mistakes. At the end of time, the main character will have his
memories and personalities merged. Then he'll look back on countless lifetimes
of the same mistakes and regrets. It would be like if someone slipped you some
Ambien (to prevent memory formation), played the same prank on you 20 times,
then showed you a video of it after you sobered up. "Ha-ha, you fell for it
every time! Classic!" Except instead of 20 times it would be billions
(possibly trillions) of lifetimes. And instead of one prank, it would be
countless heartbreaks, regrets, failures, and insecurities.

And that's only looking at the character's own "choices." (Is it really a
choice if you can't stop yourself from becoming John Wilkes Booth?) The
cruelty inflicted by nature would be much greater. Disease, famine, famine,
disease, famine, typhoon, famine, rattlesnake bite, famine, tsunami, etc.

Now I wonder if a sugar-coated Lovecraftian horror story was the author's
intent. No other kind of god would set up a system where you're forced to
repeat the same mistakes for billions of years.

~~~
mdisraeli
_...how very human_

I see were you are coming from, and for sake of intellectual discussion of
speculative fiction even up-voted. But I think there's a whole load of
possibilities you've missed.

The most basic one is simply that you're attributing human values to something
decidedly not human. That learning from each mistaken life is actually a
desirable feature. Perhaps only the aggregate matters. Perhaps, in fact, that
which is being studied is so alien to us that we can't see how they are in
fact learning through the process. Perhaps the point of existence is
experience itself, rather than to be able to make decisions based on that
experience. Perhaps we do learn from what we don't directly remember - that
glass of warm water still effects the finger we dip in ;)

Then there's the passage of time and characters. Let's pretend for the sake of
being able to follow an argument that concepts of "before" and "after" can be
applied at all. Perhaps all those minds which we consider horrendous are the
earlier ones, and those which come after are increasingly better? Perhaps it
is the complete opposite, as we all have the wrong idea as to the way around
things should be!

And, of course, we should be careful when interpreting "With each new life you
grow and mature and become a larger and greater intellect". After all, we are
assuming it is the experiences and learnings of the life which give those
results, rather than the process itself. Perhaps it is not that at all, but
rather those are simply a bi-product of whatever is really going on. The
foetus requires stimulation and its nascent mind simply occupying whilst it
grows and matures, and the nature of that stimulation has no effect what so
ever.

I must admit, though, I have a fondness for your lovecraftian horror twist
interpretation ;)

~~~
cjkarr
Lovecraft kind of covered this in his Randolph Carter stories. Check out "The
Silver Key"[1] as a prequel and "Through the Gates of the Silver Key"[2] as
the payoff. It's not the typical horror he's known for, but definitely
incorporates his larger cosmic themes.

[1]
[http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Silver_Key](http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Silver_Key)

[2]
[http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Through_the_Gates_of_the_Silve...](http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Through_the_Gates_of_the_Silver_Key)

------
rosser
I've read this several times before, and this bit always gets me, as they say,
"right in the feels":

 _“Don’t worry,” I said. “They’ll be fine. Your kids will remember you as
perfect in every way. They didn’t have time to grow contempt for you. Your
wife will cry on the outside, but will be secretly relieved. To be fair, your
marriage was falling apart. If it’s any consolation, she’ll feel very guilty
for feeling relieved.”_

It's just so _human_. It's almost confrontational in its degree of, "That's
just how shit is sometimes," but it's delivered with utter compassion. That
juxtaposition captures so much of how I feel about the human condition.

~~~
herokusaki
> It's just so human .

Now that you've described it like that I realize that evoking that feeling is
the selling point of most literary fiction. I also feel a bit ashamed I didn't
realize this earlier. It's more precise than just saying something has
"realistic characters".

------
dhughes
Another good short story similar to this is Asimov's "The Last Question."
[http://filer.case.edu/dts8/thelastq.htm](http://filer.case.edu/dts8/thelastq.htm)

~~~
ngpio
And "The Last Answer", which ironically ends with a question while "The Last
Question" ends with an answer.

And a bunch of others that aren't quite similar except that they're short,
provocative scifi. Here's my list of favorites:

* Ted Chiang - Understand - [http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/under.htm](http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/under.htm)

* Ted Chiang - Exhalation - [http://www.nightshadebooks.com/Downloads/Exhalation%20-%20Te...](http://www.nightshadebooks.com/Downloads/Exhalation%20-%20Ted%20Chiang.html)

* Ted Chiang - Hell Is the Absence of God - [http://www.ibooksonline.com/88/Text/hell.html](http://www.ibooksonline.com/88/Text/hell.html)

* Sam Hughes - Ed stories - [http://qntm.org/ed](http://qntm.org/ed)

* Isaac Asimov - The Last Answer - [http://www.thrivenotes.com/the-last-answer/](http://www.thrivenotes.com/the-last-answer/)

* Aaron Diaz - Hob series - [http://dresdencodak.com/2007/02/08/pom/](http://dresdencodak.com/2007/02/08/pom/)

* Greg Egan - Closer - [http://eidolon.net/?story=Closer](http://eidolon.net/?story=Closer)

* Marc Stiegler - The Gentle Seduction - [http://www.skyhunter.com/marcs/GentleSeduction.html](http://www.skyhunter.com/marcs/GentleSeduction.html)

~~~
afriend4lyfe
wow ngpio, this list is great. you've probably come across this one before as
well but it's definitely a good one: "I don't know, Timmy, being God is a big
responsibility"
[http://qntm.org/responsibility](http://qntm.org/responsibility)

~~~
wfn
Recursive simulation layers! it's good stuff. :)

Perhaps also check out his "Fine Structure"
[http://qntm.org/structure](http://qntm.org/structure) (different kind of
thing, but it's good scifi..) and perhaps the ongoing series / work in
progress "Ra" [http://qntm.org/ra](http://qntm.org/ra)

------
whyme
That model seems ineffective. While it operates in parallel, spawns a plethora
of threads and does, I imagine, aim to end in eventual consistency, it also
seems to lack any form of shared state. If I was me I would make sure I
overlap myself on each new instance and not deal with that restart time. I'd
also suggest picking a different tool rather than the current one... I think I
might be using LISP (Lost In Self Protocol).

~~~
VexXtreme
It's just a beautiful piece of fiction, not a computer program. No need to
draw parallels with how software works, it's kind of pointless.

~~~
whyme
Wow, I guess I'll try not to have a little fun along the way... Sheesh.

------
gkoberger
Completely off topic, however I read this originally right around when Lost
went off the air.

I always wished this is how Lost ended: with Jack being told by Jacob that he
was actually everyone on the plane (which is why they all had a weird
connection), and all these lives were him waiting to be "born" into running
the island.

~~~
RBerenguel
I wasn't a Lost follower (my gf at the time was, so I heard most of the plot
without paying much attention.) By the end I was expecting to be some kind of
nonsense (like it did,) but I was expecting more like a room full of monkeys
with typewriters. Seriously.

------
timurtamerlan
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-
electron_universe](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-electron_universe)

~~~
InTheSwiss
Replying with a non-mobile link for those who are as lazy as I am when I see a
.m Wikipedia link :)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-
electron_universe](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-electron_universe)

------
julianpye
On HN, we want to hack the way our systems work. We want to see through the
obscurity and complexities advanced systems have brought along and find the
most elegant and quickest way to challenge and control them. Why can we not
look at hacking religion? Why can we not hack philosophy? I like this story,
but more than that I like the fact that it has reached page 1 on HN. I think
many people here are not looking for self-realisation in the form of a startup
that brings them big bucks, but hey - self-realisation.

~~~
polemic
_" Why can we not look at hacking religion"_

I'm in the camp of people that considers religion a hack already - a
psychological manipulation of emotions and thoughts to bring about a
particular state of being and behaviour. In many cases it's a beneficial
symbiosis - and in others a spiritually parasitical one - between the 'host'
religion and the 'client' believer.

So what does it mean to 'hack' region? To further twist it to your own
purposes? That's been happening for millennia - large organisations have been
honing their practises, others are constantly 'disrupting' it with
alternatives.

~~~
mercer
I know a number of people who 'hack' religion, in the sense that they don't
necessarily buy into all of it, but use it to further an agenda that I would
consider good. My former pastor (and father) is one of them. I've also known a
number of gay individuals who did not believe they were 'sinful' and yet
actively worked within a religious framework that condemned them, because they
felt the benefits were worth it.

That said, most of them _do_ believe quit a bit of their chosen religion.

------
samatman
This is within an iota of the precise cosmology of my religion of birth:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashmir_Shaivism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashmir_Shaivism)

Except that, coming from that background, I expected the big reveal to be that
the Egg is talking to himself, hatched.

As unprovable speculations about the nature of reality go, I rather like this
one.

~~~
diminish
Indeed, egg talking to himself would be better. Otherwise our existential
problem isn't clarified just moved up one level of conscience.

~~~
admnor
One could imagine the concept recurring outward, since time has no meaning.
Maybe when egg has lived all the lives he moves to the next level and finds
that he was both egg and the "god", teaching himself.

------
Xcelerate
This would be horrifying if it was true. Think of how many billions of
painful, terrible lives you would have to experience.

Edit: I suppose it's just as horrible regardless of whether or not you
experience them...

~~~
exodust
Don't forget this is all make believe. You won't need to re-live the lives of
everyone there ever was, as implied in this creative writing.

"Once you’ve lived every human life throughout all time, you will have grown
enough to be born".

There's no magic number of humans that represents "all of them". It's odd to
suggest that people (even aborted foetuses?) are only part of a giant
equation, that permits one into heaven, or whatever is suggested here.

Please, this is not a lot different than believing that the large round
boulders on the hill were laid by crocodile spirits a long time ago. Lovely
story and belief of a particular native people. But those boulders have quite
a different origin - nothing to do with crocodiles, and their fate has nothing
to do with crocodiles either.

A conversation isn't waiting on the other side. Death is the end of
conversation, not the beginning. We only hope it will mean beginnings and re-
incarnations, but the chances are that when you die, you're done being human
and you'll be onto something else.

LOL, progressing up through the ranks of humanity to reach God-status. That is
some messed up mass-ego injection.

------
leobelle
What about pre-human hominids? Was he also all the Homo Ergasters? Homo
Habilis? Australopithecus Afarensis? The great apes? All the mammals? All
multi-celled life?

I don't get what's interesting about this story. It's pretty silly and not
very enlightening.

~~~
bambax
Me too. It's ridiculous and empty.

------
yc-kjh
Incompatible with Free Will

The story is incompatible with free will. The only way the universe could be
the way it is, with the one person living all those lives, yet always choosing
such that the other people (him in another re-incarnation) also always choose
as they (he) did, it would be necessary for free will not to exist.

But this would also mean that the "god" in this story also didn't have free
will, because the man was "of his (god's) kind".

But if God does not have free will, he isn't the greatest possible being. The
universe thus described therefore fails Anselm's Ontological Argument for the
Existence of God. The hypothetical God who is identical to the God in this
story, with the exception that He DOES have free will, is obviously a greater
being.

I conclude that this story cannot possibly describe Reality, as It actually
Is.

~~~
hobs
With some specific FMRI tests, they have shown that your decisions are being
made before your are consciousnessly aware of them, therefore what we would
call free will is called into question as something that exists at all, and
arguing our consciousness is not an artifact of many lower level processes is
a hard sell. (to me anyway)

Additionally: I don't see how the ontological argument ever was correct, "god
is the most perfect, therefore he exists because an attribute of perfection is
existence" is about the most ass backwards way of trying to prove the
existence of anything, much less the creator of the universe. I conclude the
this story is about as accurate as any other non-evidence based argument for
some sort of creator and how they(it/he/she) works.

~~~
yc-kjh
> your decisions are being made > before your are consciousnessly aware of
> them

Yes, I'm aware of these studies.

But they make the mistake of presupposing materialist reductionism a priori,
as if it were actually true.

Those who assume materialist reductionism have an entire set of questions they
are incapable of answering, such as:

1) How can teleology arise from non-teleology? 2) Whence consciousness? 3) How
can something come from nothing?

There is a great deal of evidence that materialism is not the best explanation
for Reality. If you want to see some of this evidence, read "Mind and Cosmos"
by Thomas Nagel.

~~~
nitrogen
1) Show teleology is more than a human construction to explain the purposes we
ourselves invented

2) Emergent behavior in the brain

3) Big bang

Treating these questions as unanswerable assumes a very weak form of
materialism.

~~~
yc-kjh
> Show teleology is more than a human construction > to explain the purposes
> we ourselves invented

Your question itself is enough evidence that humans didn't invent teleology,
but merely recognized its existence. You are asking for a reason _why_. You
are asking a teleological question.

Two year old children do the same thing, constantly. They ask why.

It is natural to ask why.

It is very unnatural to deny the naturalness of asking why, or to try to
suppress it, as if the desire to understand why didn't exist in all of us.

Indeed, the answer to the "why" question is one of the four causes Aristotle
says we must explain to understand what a thing is. We must understand the why
behind it. That is the final cause, or the purpose for the thing.

What you cannot answer is this: How can final cause -- purpose or motivating
reason for something -- arise out of nothing? Indeed, the intelligent person
recognizes that such an idea is non-sense, and rejects it out of hand.

You get purpose, or reason for being, from a priori purpose or reason. I work
in order to have money. I want money in order to buy food and shelter. I want
food and shelter to continue to survive. And so on.

You never get purpose, or reason for being, from nothing.

You think by asking me to show that teleology is more than a human
construction, that you will bolster your evidence for reductive materialism --
especially if I can't provide an answer that meets your satisfaction. But in
so doing, you are demonstrating teleology. You have a goal. You are driving
towards that goal. And your goal is self-contradictory. Your goal is to
establish that teleology is somehow not Real, not inherent in the universe,
and not inherent in us. But goal-based action is what teleology is all about.
So you are engaging in the very behavior you are seeking to prove doesn't
exist, except as a figment of our imagination.

A house divided against itself cannot stand.

~~~
nitrogen
_What you cannot answer is this: How can final cause -- purpose or motivating
reason for something -- arise out of nothing? Indeed, the intelligent person
recognizes that such an idea is non-sense, and rejects it out of hand._

I can indeed answer this, and I will. Also, it strikes me as bad form to imply
that someone who disagrees with you is unintelligent because they do not
reject the ideas you want them to reject.

Now to my answer: purpose arises from lack of purpose because purpose itself
is merely emergent behavior in the neurons of our brains, arising from the
laws of physics.

 _You get purpose, or reason for being, from a priori purpose or reason. I
work in order to have money. I want money in order to buy food and shelter. I
want food and shelter to continue to survive. And so on.

You never get purpose, or reason for being, from nothing._

You still have to show that _purpose_ , itself, exists in any form other than
a chemical arrangement in our brains. For that matter, you have to define the
"nothing" from which purpose is supposed not to have originated, before I can
agree that, indeed, that sort of "nothing" is incapable of creating "purpose",
or even agree that such a definition of "nothing" is tenable.

 _But in so doing, you are demonstrating teleology. You have a goal._

I may have a goal behind this comment, but behind that goal is an emergent
phenomenon of the laws of physics, and as such, my "goal" is not incompatible
with my claimed nonexistence of teleology.

------
WCityMike
The author of this wrote THE MARTIAN. I recommend it:

[http://smile.amazon.com/Martian-Andy-Weir-
ebook/dp/B00EMXBDM...](http://smile.amazon.com/Martian-Andy-Weir-
ebook/dp/B00EMXBDMA/)

~~~
judk
Amazon Smile link, first I have seen in the wild!

------
otikik
Well I'm glad I wrote it.

------
ctoth
While we're talking about dark cosmologies, Divided by Infinity [0] is
fantastic. I'll post it here as when I try to submit it as its own post it is
automatically marked dead.

[0] [http://www.tor.com/stories/2010/08/divided-by-
infinity](http://www.tor.com/stories/2010/08/divided-by-infinity)

------
smky80
This seemed cute the first time I read it, and it explains the "why I am me?"
question that most religions just don't.

But I realized, this is would be an absolute disaster if true. True story:
life more or less sucks if you aren't near a local maximum of a food chain.

~~~
judk
I always thought the point of he story was to call attention to that fact and
plead for empathy and compassion.

~~~
dhoulb
I think there's an inevitability to his eventual hatching of superpowers.
Whether or not he's good, bad, or indifferent to people, all he has to do is
wait it out —til they're all dead — and he hatches into super universe
monster. Pretty sweet.

------
shire
First time reading this story would be nice if someone can explain the
takeaway from this? It's a very deep story but trying to rationalize the
meaning or concept behind the idea of this story. Thanks:)

~~~
Geee
We should love each other like we love ourselves.

~~~
shire
some people can take the idea very literal lol

------
NhanH
I'd strongly suggest "Sum: 40 tales from the after lives" for anyone enjoy
this story. It's a lovely collection of short stories with very similar
writing style and theme.

------
codeulike
The central idea - ROT13 ... gung rirel uhzna guebhtu gvzr vf gur fnzr fbhy
orvat er-vapneangrq ... /ROT13 is also explored in parts of Transcendent, by
Stephen Baxter, in which immortal far future beings ROT13 zhfg cercner sbe
gurve vzzbegnyvgl ol rkcrevrapvat rirel yvsrgvzr bs rirel uhzna gung unf rire
yvirq orsber gurz. /ROT13. It is also mentioned in The Thought Gang by Tibor
Fisher as a possible metaphysics.

------
crntaylor
This would have been a significantly more enjoyable experience if the title of
the submission didn't give away the ending.

~~~
gojomo
On the other hand, a title of "The Egg" might not have attracted enough views
and upvotes for you to have seen it. There's a pique/spoil trade-off, now in
social media more than ever.

(In this case, the first line might have worked just as well, though: "You
were on your way home when you died...")

~~~
anigbrowl
The Egg (short Sci-fi story) would have been perfectly adequate.

~~~
judk
Speculative fiction, or parable, or fable, or theology.

------
thatthatis
Of all the religious, non religious, philosophical, etc. texts I've ever read.
This is the one I most hope is true.

~~~
Almaviva
Me too (us too?) but I guiltily admit it's partly because I'd like to
experience being Genghis Khan.

~~~
nske
But then again you'd have to experience being Paris Hilton as well.

------
sharemywin
brings new meaning to "go f* yourself"

------
afriend4lyfe
The Gentle Seduction is a similar short story in regards to singularity that
The Egg reminded me of
[http://www.skyhunter.com/marcs/GentleSeduction.html](http://www.skyhunter.com/marcs/GentleSeduction.html)

------
terranstyler
This would mean that life is an episode in a Monte-Carlo simulation traversing
the state space of all possible human lifes.

The story also suggests that the simulation is heavily parallel and complete
knowledge of all episodes (rather all paths) makes you god.

------
LukeShu
I hadn't read this, but I recognized the author's name as the author of one of
my favorite (no longer running) webcomics[0]. I guess that means I would
probably enjoy his other writings[1].

[0]:
[http://www.galactanet.com/comic/view.php?strip=1](http://www.galactanet.com/comic/view.php?strip=1)
[1]:
[http://www.galactanet.com/writing.html](http://www.galactanet.com/writing.html)

... hmm, now I'm a little disapointed in myself that I didn't recognize the
domain name too.

------
bennemann
I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together. I am the eggman,
they are the eggmen. I am the walrus, goo goo g'joob goo goo g'joob. Lennon

------
pirateking
The theme and mood remind me somewhat of Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke -
one of my favorite books.

------
stuaxo
Ah, interesting - I've been thinking that if time isn't linear + there is
reincarnation then only needing one soul is an obvious side effect, and then
this story goes on to answer the next question that comes up.

Of course, it's just a thought experiment - though it is interesting.

------
swatkat
Wow! That was a good read. _Advaita_ philosophy, and _Karma Siddantha_ in a
nutshell.

------
spindritf
How can you bootstrap such a world with only one soul? (I know, not the right
question.)

~~~
walden42
One soul manifests itself as endless possibilities, including you, me, and the
world. That's the core of advaita vedanta:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advaita_Vedanta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advaita_Vedanta)

------
joe_inferno
This is a little reminiscent of Mormonism (minus the 'only you and me' bit)

------
voidlogic
Same premise as Mark Twain's _The Mysterious Stranger_
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mysterious_Stranger](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mysterious_Stranger)

------
VonGuard
I first read this on 4chan. I'm so glad to learn it wasn't created there... A
truly life changing story.

------
RexRollman
I enjoyed the story. Thanks for posting this mickgiles.

------
sillysaurus2
I wonder when this was written?

~~~
NaNaN
August 2009. The author told me by email.

------
z3phyr
That was G-Man

------
auggierose
That makes actually a lot of sense.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
Unlike that sentence structure :)

------
squirejons
I think I will stick with cryonics. Thanks, anyway...

------
thenerdfiles

        The rate of information increases.
    

This is true of humans, gods, and all things. Some initial configuration is
irrelevant to this fact of existence — that information describes it, so too,
is part of the configuration that you play into.

Many gods, one god, whatever — it is part of a being to know what is relevant
at any point in time. If there are gods, your death is something that becomes
information to them.

The implication here is that even in their case, their ends become information
to something else.

The first to be surprised — to introduce new information — doesn't "win" or
"sin". What's to be felt about the falsity that

    
    
            The rate of information increases.
    
    ?

------
phhh
Old. Seriously who hasn't read this by now.

~~~
vbuterin
I haven't, for one.

~~~
thenerdfiles
Do souls have cryptographic hashes?

~~~
kordless
Assuredly they do. It's intriguing you replied with this comment to the guy
that will probably bring that to pass for all software processes.

~~~
thenerdfiles
I know exactly who I asked this of, and that's why I asked it of him.

~~~
kordless
That would imply we're all thinking the same thing then. That continues to be
interesting to me.

~~~
thenerdfiles
That we could all be considering a concept that has, even if true, a
statistically insignificant measurable signature?

    
    
        God: Oh yes, yes! Souls... I remember those. Great idea at the time. Yeah, I wrote those a loooong time ago. They're causally insignificant now, I'm pretty sure. Obviously it's all automated by now.
    

Or something Stephensonian, like the protofestering of a fledgling clan of
digital spiritalists secretly brooding over the core belief-set of Hackerdom
as it is scripted?

