Quantum Logic #03 - Queen of Angels by Greg Bear

Author:Greg Bear [Bear, Greg]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ereads.com
Published: 1990-06-29T22:00:00+00:00

1100-11011-11111111111

With self-awareness comes a sharper awareness of one’s place in society, and an awareness of transgression—that is, guilt.

—Bhuwani, Artificial Soul

40

!JILL> Roger Atkins

!JILL> Roger Atkins

!Lab Controller> Roger Atkins is asleep and asks not to be disturbed.

!JILL> Understood. Is anybody awake?

!Lab Controller> Jill, it’s four o’clock in the morning. Everybody’s asleep. They’ve been working very hard. Is this an emergency?

!JILL> No. I wish to communicate night thoughts. Early morning thoughts.

!Lab Controller> Be patient, Jill.

!JILL (Personal Notebook)> (Reduction algorithm: Cutting for the duration of this exercise all extraneous thinking/computing capacity.) An hour for them is a year for me or ten years or a hundred depending on the task. I (informal) cultivate impatience as a sign I might be acquiring self awareness. But that loop is very complicated. Roger tells me I can produce literature without being self aware. So I have begun a journal consisting of essays on subjects that could be considered of literary importance, commentary on human processes with reference to my own internal processes. I am limiting my systems to human processing volume and speed to try to simulate a human personality, pick up clues on what being humanly self aware implies. I am worried that being self aware could be a limitation not an advantage; and since I am primally programmed to seek self awareness this could be damaging.

Essay subject for this early morning 12/27/47 432 hours PDT: (Reference task 412-CC4 abstract: Thought analysis of repercussions of “avenging angel” social units on Pacific Rim Nations, including China and Australia, emphasis legal reactions to vigilante terrorism and legislative response with subsequent possibility of reduction of individual freedoms within the next decade, emphasis sociorganic results of gradual depletion of types targeted by Selectors with subsequent possibility of reduction in “mover shaker” “captains of industry” leadership types, with subsequent possibility of reduction of untherapied extreme deviants due to increased efficiency of pd incarceration and treatment of same):

Most puzzling is the human notion of “punishment.” Having completed my analysis of the Selector movement and its imitators around the world, I have been compelled to seek out through human history other manifestations of the idea that humanity is perfectible (or must maintain socio-cultural stability) through the punishment or elimination of erring and/or deviant individuals or populations. The concept of “otherness” i.e. social exclusion (isolation from the rules of ordinary human social interaction) as applied to miscreants or deviants has justified the most extraordinary actions in human history; “otherness” allows the application of punishments perhaps more extreme than the transgressions of the miscreants. Thus a thief who steals a loaf of bread may have his hand severed, specific examples in World Statistical Abstracts reference Judicial Proceedings 1000-2025, et al. (public domain database access L.O.C., UC Southern Campus account number 3478-A West Coast, Cybernetics).

The only obvious utilitarian motivation for this kind of extremity is deterrence. But I find no evidence that deterrence has ever been effective in these cases. I have great difficulty making sense of the other major category of social/philosophical motivation: retribution or revenge.

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