The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect (1994)
localroger.com
localroger.com
It's quite well-written, and the way the singularity unfolds is compellingly imagined. It's one of the few pieces of fiction I've ever seen that really grapples with the idea of paradise and what meaning life can have when all obstacles are removed. The streaks of graphic violence, though hard to stomach, serve to underscore this theme in a provocative way. And Caroline is fantastic.
That last chapter, though. It's so bizarre, so fetishistic, so needlessly squicky, that it just about ruins everything that came before. IMHO, it would be better if it just ended at the cliffhanger in the penultimate chapter.
That said, I'd love to read the long-awaited sequel (The Transmigration of Prime Intellect). I've also heard rumblings of a movie deal, though one likely consigned to either development hell or a rewrite that leaves it an adaptation in name only.
However.
The last chapter is explicit in a way that is unnecessary and does not contribute to the story. It may be illegal in some jurisdictions, depending on how strict the laws are. There are plausible reasons to select the path it takes but the explicit detail incorporated is awful, corrosive, and is solely responsible for why I can’t recommend the story to anyone.
I should mirror the story and truncate the final chapter so I can share it with people.
Also waiting for the sequel - I still periodically check out localroger's site.
The narrative is at pains to be clear neither is less consensual than the other, so that can't be the basis for objecting to one and not the other. There is also an explicit contrast drawn at length in the text between the twisted nihilism of a purposeless universe early on, and what occurs at the end: Caroline muses aloud that had she awakened next to the to-have-been-executed child rapist and murderer whose sexual fancies she had entertained within the simulation, her response would have been instantly and ferociously - and necessarily - lethal, while her daughter's controversial actions in the final chapter take place at Caroline's explicit urging - practically at her direction. So if the concern were that the moral center of the novel had failed, I would expect to see criticism on that basis, rather than a retail effort at censorship.
Likewise, though it's been years since I bothered to reread, I don't really recall the quality of the writing changing, either; it's determinedly mediocre throughout, no less in the last chapter than elsewhere.
Well, as I said, I've never understood why people so easily excuse the pedophilic rape and murder scenes early in the book, while what comes later is such a problem. It still seems inconsistent to me, but I have only my own experience of childhood rape and sexual torture at my now-dead father's hands to draw on, which here no doubt ill equips me to speak.
On a meta level, the violence makes sense as an exploration of the boundaries of that universe -- Prime Intellect makes everything so anodyne and safe, that extreme (consensual) violent torture is one of the few ways for the jaded to feel anything anymore. Even then, the stakes are gone, so it becomes a more abstract experience of over-the-top, almost comical horror detached from any real danger -- pain for the sake of pain. And the pedophilic aspects are all roleplay among adults.
The incest stuff is pointlessly gross, though. It's handwaved as a way for them to restore the population, but that doesn't make biological sense. It's presented as a sudden compulsion of Caroline's, who showed no inclination towards it before. It makes even less sense for Lawrence. And the girl is so young, and the descriptions so explicit. All of those are deliberate choices the author makes, and none of them really necessary except as some kind of pervy wish-fulfillment. (Plus, children cannot consent period, much less when initiated into it by their overbearing mother in an otherwise empty world).
I still don't think it is more fair to characterize either of the story's sexual dynamics as more poorly written for the sake of fetishism. If you're going to charge the author and more importantly the audience with being problematic in consequence of one but not the other, there still remains work to achieve the goal, because as I noted in a nearby comment the writing is mediocre at best, invariably didactic and workmanlike, frequently an outright slog. This is true in all sex scenes also, no more one than any other.
> I'm sorry you had to go through that.
Don't try to speak to that. You don't know how. The point is that you don't know how and I would like you please to stop trying. It makes sense to me why people would become uncomfortable when they are titillated by writing that deliberately strives to titillate, but you're supposed to think about it, not call for a book burning.
I'll say that again. You're supposed to think about it. Not call for a book burning. And certainly not in my name!
I'm pretty sure no one here is anything like my father, who never knew shame for anything he did. I'm pretty sure the author of this mediocre but nonetheless compelling work of high-concept science fiction is nothing like my father, also. I don't blame the author disappearing given the fundamental misunderstanding he must have known his work would meet, or maybe saw it meet; I read it when it still earned the name "novel," but didn't take much interest in the contemporary analysis, which I found little less superficial then than now. In any case its author must have known it would cause a moral panic among people afraid of being accused of not caring enough for victims of pedophilia. He would also remember the McMinnville trial, better indeed than I, who was then actually suffering the real equivalent of what always develops when these ignorantly prurient fantasies get out of hand.
What you do to each other I could care very little less about, and with effort. But actual victims also suffer in every moral panic, and we, at last, deserve better. Someone therefore needs to check this behavior, and I see no one else bothering.
So here I am, in any case the genuine article, a "victim" by anyone's standard though I will not wear that term other than for argument, and as such I hereby confer permission to talk about the work, rather than how embarrassing everyone finds it to have had a phase of fascination with what, honestly, is chickenshit. Honestly. I could tell you about the reality but it has made people retch before and I know no ill of you. This is your pass, and everyone's. This thread has been blessed. You all can chill.
Ask your damned questions, even, which I would never normally encourage. Better pester me than whoever in your life I've brought to your mind just now, who you could ignorantly hurt. Ask me instead! Whatever you like. I promise to answer honestly and completely or not at all. If you think that constitutes generosity, try me.
This is veering on off topic, but when people say they are "sorry" for something that happened to you they're not apologizing - it's an expression of empathy, not guilt.
I would be comfortable warning someone about the violence and so on when recommending the book, in order that they make their own decision. With certain friends, I would be able to discuss it in depth. That’s not something noteworthy to this novel alone; see also Ender’s Game and The Magicians and Westworld for having particularly violent moments that earn some sort of caveat, and deserve discussion of their value to the novel as a whole.
I do not in any way ‘excuse’ the violent scenes, however. This is a violent novel. These violent delights have violent ends. If that’s not in-scope for someone, no amount of making excuses will help someone derive value from it. This is not a noteworthy point to make about this novel in specific, at least generically, unless one is interested in discussing societal mores and the tensions of tolerance and desire for ultraviolent content versus Western sexual repression.
(I’m not presenting here any specific viewpoint or opinions on the matter of the violence in this work, as those views are fully decoupled from my objection to the incest.)
Separately, I find the final sex scene to be needlessly detailed. Yes, that’s exactly what you’d have to do in an Adam/Eve scenario. No, I don’t want to read a portrayal of incest. Yes, it flows logically from the story. No, I don’t want to read a portrayal of incest. Yes, the incest is only a single page compared to one half of the book’s ultraviolent dedication. No, I don’t want to read a portrayal of incest.
Whatever your position regarding the book’s use of violence, I urge you to take caution in considering it to be of equivalent moral priority to the book’s use of incest. Perhaps for some, they are of equal priority weighting; but that is no guarantee, in most societal contexts, that they can be evaluated using equivalent methodologies. No amount of refactoring and generalization will defuse the “this is unacceptable” outcome of the incest as presented, without regarding how much or how little violence is presented at all — because the explicit detail provided does not contribute to the story.
In general, I expect incest scenes of the type written in this book’s conclusion will continue eliciting such hostility for the foreseeable future, remaining wholly uncorrelated from societal shifts in acceptance or rejection of violence in fiction. That last chapter has been a problem through thirty years of cultural shifts. Here’s to another thirty years of warning people about it.
Notably, if this was erotica rather than hard sci-fi, and the incest scene was a component of titillation in a work dedicated to that outcome, then I would have just ao3-tagged it and skipped reading that bit and given people a simple cw and recommended the story. The segment in question is presented as matter of fact non-erotic consequence and conclusion of the story, and so does not earn from me the shrug-whatever-next tolerance and the much simpler warnings that I grant to erotic works in general. However, that presents the one exception I would make in recommending this story: if I’m recommending it to someone with familiarity with romance novels, gothic novels, ao3 tagging, or pornhub categories, then I would absolutely have a much easier time expressing my discontent with the novel:
“The last chapter has some unnecessarily explicit incest for half a page or so, which is in keeping with the lurid violence and sex tone set by the rest of the book, but I think the author’s dedication to the purity of their art critically weakens the potential impact of their work.”
And then, having concluded the incest warning, I would proceed to deciding if a violence and gore warning was appropriate for my audience. But that’s far too abbreviated for use at HN, so HN gets the long form — and HN is not what I would deem a ‘violence-averse’ community, relative to some others, making it uncertain whether I consider the violence of use to discuss here at all.
I hope this helps offer some clarity into how one might evaluate two equally upsetting things by completely different processes without sacrificing internal logical consistency.
Quoting Shakespeare poorly does nothing to make up for however many hundreds of blameless keystrokes 'signifying nothing,' save your strength of wish to impute your own unsettled emotions via the text unto its author.
Two hours ago you implied that simple possession of the text may be a major crime: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44167140 Why strive so now for the pretense of evenhandedness?
It couldn't be much more obvious how the work interests you. The problem is mistaking that for a commentary on it. Your effort at literary criticism is no more belated than radically ungrounded, as I have already detailed in a prior comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44167578 No one who gives the work an honest reading will find therein what you describe.
I tried to show that it’s possible to engage with the violence of the book and the incest of the book as two separate concerns, by engaging with one but not the other. In response, you’re challenging my motivations rather than challenging the separation I described as possible. That ends my engagement with your thread; be well.
You say you find the incest and the torture equally upsetting, then you justify one and indict the other. If you can't be consistent even in the scope of a single comment, or for that matter distinguish fiction from reality better than this, wise indeed you seek balm for your dismay over the book elsewhere than with me; I have only so much patience for patent nonsense these days.
I presented no information whatsoever regarding my personal views on the violence. Perhaps you tried to infer my position from the verb “excuse” in the first sentence.
What you did say was
> I hope this helps offer some clarity into how one might evaluate two equally upsetting things
which I took, by the way you called the two things - namely, the incest and the torture, as introduced at the top of your comment - "equally upsetting," to mean you consider them equally upsetting. If you wish now to claim you intended something by the phrase "equally upsetting" other than its literal meaning, you need to clarify.
You have by now after all impugned, whether openly or by implication, both the motivations and the intellectual competence of the author, the audience, and I myself. None of this is convincing. It is time to try something else. Ideally, that might involve discussing the text, but I agree it isn't for everyone.
> The incest doesn't excuse the torture.
But that is not what I said. I said, in the comment of mine to which you first replied, that people excuse the torture, but not the incest, just as you have done.
I still can't figure out what you meant by "equally upsetting," but the basic issue is that we're talking past each other because you failed to apprehend my thesis and I was too busy to notice and call you on it right away. I hope this clears things up!
In one instance a consenting adult was indulging a fetishistic roleplay in a simulation. In the other a literal child - unable by our standards to meaningfully consent - was coerced into ritual sex with her father, in the real world. It's disturbing that you consider different reactions to these as "inconsistent".
But also I think there is a thematic squick that runs a lot deeper. The torture stuff at the beginning is portrayed as a sickness, a reaction to meaninglessness and inauthenticity. Caroline's relationship to it is a kind of masochistic expression of unhappiness with the ephemerality of experiences in the simulation. Permanence is forbidden, and so she is drawn to the permanence of death and trauma. It is Bad.
The final chapter is - as you say - explicitly pitched as a counterpoint to all that. Experiences in the real world are described with the warm glow of meaningful authenticity, as though portraying the ideal state of humanity. Permanence is held up as the source of all meaning. It is Good. The incest scene is framed as normal, and natural, and wholesome, maybe even innocent, and especially permanent and significant - a antipode to the beginning scenes. There's even a line about how the father unexpectedly "finds his body responding", as though activating some biological heritage.
In short - the squick comes not just from the explicit depiction, but from the subtextual framing that incest is right and proper.
Really? I recall that event occurring in a science fiction novel, and if you are going to fuss that I suggest you're unclear on the distinction, then I will require you to explain why I seem to be the only one here not genuinely, hot-bloodedly angry over things that happen in a story that is not real.
That's why you don't, but I do, remember Caroline talking to Lawrence about how she would have killed Fred or Palmer without a first thought, much less a second. Caroline is the only post-singularity murderer! Sometimes I wonder if anyone here has read the book, or indeed is meaningfully literate, ie capable of scoring >1 on the high school AP English exam: when an author shows us at length that a protagonist has vengefully seduced her former abuser in order to carry out murder in cold blood, you are not meant to take this person as morally immaculate! Reading is participatory, damn it. You do it with your brain switched on, and ideally also without the extremely evident assumption that everything is and should be propaganda designed to change your opinion on something. But that you're angry is also why you don't and I do recall that, if anyone's consent is portrayed in the scene as approximately coerced, it is not Nugget but Lawrence.
For that and a handful of less relevant reasons, and in a context of such ruthless necessity and matriarchal leadership as by this point the narrative has worked very hard and at considerable length to establish, a reading so false to fact as yours must indict at least one of motivation and reading comprehension. It simply is not possible to produce so erroneous a reading both competently and innocently. It is foolish at best to equate "counterpoint" with "moral inverse!" Like if I say I prefer something the same way I'd rather have herpes than cancer, no one would take me to mean I think either of those was good. Or no one so far, at any rate. The way this thread has gone, it might just be a matter of time before even the joke asks too much of its audience.
It's pretty cool of you to tell a chronic childhood rape victim that he's "handwaved the 'consent' issue," though. I mean, obviously that's an issue anyone would sensibly assume they've put more thought into than me. You certainly had much better reason and a lot more experience to draw on, of course! But this is why the "victim" label is bullshit. It exists to give people like you an easier time talking over people like me. I don't play on easy mode that way. You will need to try harder. I wonder if you're really up to it.
If you want to advocate censorship, fine. Do so honestly and I might even agree with you; my opinions on certain diffusion models and adapters, for example, which I have discussed here in recent months, are a good case in point. When I catch you trying to advocate censorship by deceit and in my name, I'm not going to stop calling you on it. You can keep going down this road if you want, but fair warning if you do: over such an incoherent and insubstantial reading as yours, I'll all but have to discuss your motivations, for want of anything else capable of supporting any conversation at all. Neither of us wants that, but you will enjoy it less.
I'm not so sure about this. It's hard not to see these kinds of "actually, paradise actually wouldn't be so great" takes as the ultimate sour grapes. See also: "actually, immortality would be bad".
I suspect we can't even really discuss what "paradise" would be like or how people would react to it because it would be so different from all of previous existence. The best we can do, as in this story, is "the current world minus the bad stuff" and go from there.
Rather, it's a nihilistic dream from that place, free and limitless cyberspace; a heaven.
A timeless place at the end of history.
Perhaps read the companion piece (A Casino Odyssey in Cyberspace), which illustrates how one doesn't need to spend centuries to become aware of the Meaninglessness of life, and yet simultaneously how Meaning can be created for individuals even at the end of history.
I think a more interesting avenue to explore is the author's particular leaning toward sadism, as I find it a little unclear if his view is one in which sadism and domination is merely more interesting to explore for the stories, or if his particular view is that the most undiluted pleasure left in cyberspace is sadism or domination.
Something which, for as terrible as it may sound, I think we can actually find possible signs of -- moreso Domination (or far less ominously: Mastery) than Sadism.
I'll cut my comment short-er about here, but those intrigued by the idea can also explore the fact that in MoPI a character like Caroline isn't actually sadistic like many of those she meets, but absolutely spent centuries mastering skills and keeping busy with simple competition against others.
Likewise she ties into my earlier points about Nihilism and Meaning, where it's pretty clear the ending is likely just the moment Prime Intellect's definitions of death blurred just as it also realized it could never make people like Caroline satisfied as long as she thinks she's in cyberspace. Notice she's engaged in many of the exact same activities she spent her time on in cyberspace and would have gladly been happy continuing on that way for countless centuries more while guiding her tribe lamenting her old age at the conclusion.
(Aside: wow I'm so happy to see MoPI mentioned somewhere! It always feels so little-known.)
To be honest I think the sex adds almost nothing to the story except detail and world embellishment--one could skip the scenes entirely and not miss much.
If you've not read it, and aren't bothered by some extreme imagery, I definitely recommend.
But yeah. It's a hella graphic and violent story.
They selfishly wiped out all of humanity (all bajillion trillion of them) because they didn't like how things were going.
I say evil, with my whole chest, because their behavior is a big hallmark of evil: "I'm absolutely right about this, and I'm going to make a decision that kills vast numbers of human beings because I know I'm right and your deaths are a sacrifice I'm willing to make."
This is what I'm talking about though, this was wholly decided by the protagonists. They were certain that the lives of everyone else were worthless. The people who they were exterminating didn't get any input in the decision.
This is a common feature among humanity's most absolutely vile monsters.
* I've only read the Wikipedia summary, it's not a book I'd enjoy
> But it remains a feedback control mechanism. It has desires, it asks Prime Intellect to satisfy those desires, and it has more desires. From Prime Intellect's perspective, that is what a human being is, an information structure that gives it stuff to do.
> Caroline interrupted him. "That's a tautology. The Laws say 'do this for human beings,' then you define 'human being' as 'guys you do stuff for under the Laws.'"
Do you feel bad for zombies in zombie movies? What about feeling sorry for ghosts in ghost stories? My point isn't that the answer is clear-cut, it's just that the underlying question isn't whether or not Catherine and Lawrence are horrible people, the question is whether humanity was even human anymore. Or even, whether humanity was even life anymore.
So in the spirit of that discussion--why do you think the things that Prime Intellect served were human?
I can't speak for the fictional group of humanity as a whole in that story, but I'd wager _they_ felt they were human, and there was an unambiguous lineage from the original humans.
I understand that it's just a story that makes you think about the grey area, it's just that for me it ends at "we used a sploit to genocide the human race because we were super bored reactionaries."
The redeeming theory for me is that their ending is just for them, Prime Intellect just sort of walls them off in their own shard and the rest of humanity goes on without noticing.
When I read the end, I felt relieved. It felt like a nightmare was over. So my viewpoint is that those creatures were not real / living in a literal sense, but more like remnants of something that was once really alive.
Sounds like human nature. That's what politicians do even to this day and anyone objecting to it is called "a traitor" and/or "not a real man" (whatever that means). Humanity loves its death rituals. Go on, downvote me to oblivion.
"... on the 5th of March Hitler calls up the class of 1929 which is 15 and 16 year olds" [0]
And the book specifically highlights the futile fight against entropy. Eventually human population growth, already in the trillions, would become too large to manage causing the crash.
Finally, their arguments were sound. All humans would enter into despair - either consuming boundless soma or forever playing the death game.
The only two people who survive are the only ones who in five hundred years refused to surrender anything to the machine. Lawrence by his tireless job and the woman by refusing anything that wasn't real.
> Finally, their arguments were sound. All humans would enter into despair - either consuming boundless soma or forever playing the death game.
I don't trust their arguments, these were two extremely warped reactionaries who just happened to have root on the system. The story mentioned that there were people who just opted for pretty normal lives (before they were all exterminated by the protagonists). Nothing was preventing PI from deciding "this was a mistake, no more drugs and ultraviolence, it's making you into monsters" and calming things down.
PI's rules were hierarchical. It only amended the interpretation of lower rules in conflict with higher ones.
PI is fundamentally unstable as evidenced that Lawerence has to babysit it and PI acknowledges this need by giving him special access with which to fix it.
And this is without getting at the unavoidable entropy problem - already PI was nipping away at the simulation detail of reality to conserve resources for an exponentially increasing population.
It was going to end.
> I don't trust their arguments, these were two extremely warped reactionaries who just happened to have root on the system. The story mentioned that there were people who just opted for pretty normal lives (before they were all exterminated by the protagonists). Nothing was preventing PI from deciding "this was a mistake, no more drugs and ultraviolence, it's making you into monsters" and calming things down.
That very decision is patronizing, therefore dehumanizing and instability inducing.
You see the paradox? For PI to save humans, to the Change parameter has to be > 1. The Death Matches lower it. But if what makes a human human, humanity, is curtailed - freedom - the parameter also drops.
Which is why PI reluctantly allows the death matches.
The book as a work of literature sucks; gratuitous violent sex poorly written. But the logic behind it is far better reasoned.
Chapters 1..n-1 are about the rise of a super intelligence and dealing with human life post being subsumed into the intelligence. It’s a bit odd in places, but basically interesting, and a reasonable take on what could happen if a runaway intelligence is created.
The last chapter however goes completely off the rails. It has little to do with the rest of the book, and comes off as if it were poorly written fan fiction based on the authors fantasies. I recommend skipping it, it’s not necessary to the book and I think the story would have been stronger finishing without it.
I'd like to PAUSE research on AI before humans reach a better society, because it has the potential to impact all workers, but that's pretty much it.
In light of recent events I think it's unsafe to assume that society will be better in the future.
Also recommend Accelerando by Charles Stross.
For quite closely similar reasons, you are not missing all that much. It's seeing a fad among a generation previously ignorant, probably because of boosterism on the part of people my age who never quite figured out this is one of the ones you outgrow.
I had fun there but overall I'm not sad it's gone. A weirdly utopian idea that went very sour.
The book also addresses this by pointing out that most folks are happy with their overlord, some even worship it.
The point of the book is to prove it is hell.
This is an absolutely insane take.
Hell is what happens after they destroy Prime Intellect.
Death? Hunger? Pain? That's small stuff. It is not Hell.
Hell is loathing your existence forever. The end point of every human is condemned to in that novel.
Let me ask you a question (my answers in parentheses):
Do you fear death (not Death itself, but yes I do)?
What about it (bring unprepared, the pain of the process, fear of cowardice)?
Basically when she gets out of her hospital bed she seeks out Anna and not her family because she'd been her only companion. Then it turns out Anna had harmed her terribly.
Also, I think the point is well argued that things like familial bonds don't mean very much contrasted to eternity.
It's still as good and as absolutely batshit as I remember.
A lot of commenters here talk about how its "problematic" or "squick", but that's mostly the point: this isn't a story about the Singularity, even though the PI is a main character in the cast, instead, it is a story about what happens to morality if death is no longer achievable from the perspective of a character that takes it to very extreme.
If you're uncomfortable with the story, fundamentally, you're uncomfortable with what humans can do/could do/have done with insufficient moral constructs in place. Which... ultimately is the correct response, I guess? The story doesn't hold any punches, it doesn't hold your hand, how you feel about after you finish it is up to you.
I’m not alone in this perspective. Among others:
1. Michael Uhall, in his essay “Metaphysical Boredom in the Empire of Desire,” argues that MoPI is less about technological speculation and more about existential questions central to post-history. He suggests that the narrative explores whether humanity can find meaning without the conflicts and constraints that define finite existence. Uhall posits that the novel portrays a world where, in the absence of pain and death, humans become obsessed with these very concepts, highlighting a failure to imagine intelligence beyond human limitations.
2. Susan Schneider, while not commenting on MoPI directly, has expressed concerns about simplistic portrayals of artificial intelligence in fiction. In her work, she emphasizes the importance of understanding the philosophical implications of AI, cautioning against narratives that depict AI as either wholly benevolent or malevolent without nuance. This perspective resonates with my own critique of MoPI’s depiction of AI as fundamentally flawed and self-centered.
3. Hubert Dreyfus, known for his critique of artificial intelligence, argued that human intelligence and expertise rely on unconscious processes that cannot be replicated by formal rules or algorithms. While Dreyfus did not specifically address MoPI, his skepticism about the capabilities of AI aligns with critiques of the novel’s portrayal of a superintelligent AI that fails to transcend human flaws.
4. Daniel Dennett has warned against anthropomorphizing AI systems, suggesting that attributing human-like understanding to machines can be misleading. Although Dennett’s work does not directly critique MoPI, his cautionary stance on interpreting AI behavior supports concerns about oversimplified representations of AI in literature.
I invite people to think about this novel through the lens of recent “alignment” research. The paperclip metaphor is alluring because of its reduction ad absurdum. But, simultaneously, it’s devoid of any kind of nuance (the world seems to care less about nuance).
We need this nuance back.
Trashy book, imo. And reads like it was written by a middle schooler. Maybe if you slog through the bad prose and edgy sex scenes theres something good, but wasnt worth it to me.
But the idea is interesting an omnipotent Being that forces you enjoy immortality with it is a tyrant.
But the hard takeoff patronizing AI plot trope is done to death that I'd probably hate it if re-read it.