7 "I don't understand," muttered Wesley to himself, examining the
8 reflections off of the surface of the water in his paper cup. It
9 was raining outside and the drops falling outside the window made
12 "What don't you understand?" Wesley was startled; he wasn't
13 prepared for his private mutterings to be eavesdropped upon. In
14 this case it was just Charles, one of the programmers. Wesley
15 didn't like the man, but at the moment he couldn't recall exactly
20 Charles laughed, a natural, confident laugh. "Hey, women, right?
21 Where to begin?" Wesley sighed; Charles's casual misogyny was so
22 many worlds distant from Wesley's actual relationship problems
23 that Wesley didn't think he had much hope of communicating with
26 "It's not like that," Wesley said. "She's a theist. It doesn't
29 "Uh---" Charles was too self-possessed to be described as
30 uncomfortable exactly, but Wesley could tell that he had put the
31 other man off guard; whether it was because Charles himself was
32 religious or just didn't think the subject appropirate for
33 workplace office cooler banter, or whether he simply had trouble
34 parsing the sentence and didn't feel like saying “What?”, Wesley
35 couldn't say. Charles decided to change the subject to something
38 "So, did you finish the help module we were talking about the
41 "Still working on it," said Wesley tersely, "I'll get back to
42 you---Thursday?" Charles gave him another look that he didn't
43 quite know how to interpret, and left. Wesley finshed his water
44 cup, and proceeded to his own cubicle. It was best to put last
45 night's dispute with Rachel out of his mind; he would think it
46 over on his own time, and somehow patch things up with Rachel.
47 Now it was time to work! He was a techinical writer at a midsized
48 software company in the city; his job was to write help
49 documentation for the company's products. It may have been a
50 modest position---certainly relative to Wesley's native
51 talents---but he found the work fairly engaging (at times), and
52 it paid well enough, and the conditions were comfortable.
54 But when pondering the benefits of his position, before pay and
55 perks, he was proud of his role in the scheme of things. When
56 some hapless user out there found him- or herself befuddled by
57 the company's products, it was his job to make sure that when
58 they came to read the freaking manual that the manual was clear
59 and helpful. If he communicated poorly, then who could say what
60 the toll would be on the hapless users? And if he wrote well,
61 then he similarly did not know how to calculate how much smoother
62 their days would go. The point was, even if he was not a
63 programmer---yet, he reminded himself that he would need to
64 finish that Sudoku solver in Python one of these days---he had a
65 place in the great world economy; he made a difference; he
66 created value, and was paid for it. He swore---as a ceremonial
67 gesture for his own amusement, there being no God or spirit of
68 honor to accept the gesture---that in a lesser or a greater job,
69 he would always seek to do his work to the best of his ability.
70 So resolved, he maximized the appropriate window in preparation
71 to begin writing, but---oh, hell, he was still so preoccupied by
72 the dispute with Rachel last night.
74 He kept remembering, wanting to examine his every line. He didn't
75 regret having challenged Rachel's (so uncharacteristic, so
76 perplexing!) superstition, but surely there must have been a
77 better way for him to have phrased things, some rhetorical
78 strategy he could have taken to point out her blindspot, this one
79 irrationality that was so inconsistent with the rest of her
80 being. His rhetorical performance had been lacking, he could tell
81 that---indeed, who could say but that he had made things worse?
82 But knowing that he had spoke wrongly (even as he was right)
83 didn't tell him what he should have said instead. It was said
84 that hindsight is 20/20, but sometimes even hindsight was blind.
85 He tried to keep his mind on the sacred work, set his hands to
86 the keyboard, but memories from last night kept invading his
90 -------------------------------------------
93 Rachel had come home late. "Wow, you're home late," said Wesley.
94 "Sorry I didn't make dinner for us; I had soup. Where have you
97 Rachel answered both questions in stride. "Don't worry about
98 dinner, I'm fasting until this time tomorrow. I was at the Kol
99 Nidre service at Beth Shalom." She cocked her head, looking at
100 him. "I thought you knew."
102 "I thought you were joking," he deadpanned.
104 "Wesley, It's Yom Kippur. This is the day when my people atone
105 for our sins of the previous year."
107 "I can hardly object to a day to regret one's wrongdoings, but
108 why do have to bring 'your people'---scare quotes---and their
109 primitive superstitions into it? Maybe it made sense for a bunch
110 of nomadic goatherders three thousand years ago," he said,
111 although regretting the concession immediately: whatever
112 disadvantages the authors of the Old Testament had had, he didn't
113 want to excuse anyone for believing falsehood. "But that was a
114 long time ago," he continued, "We have science now. You, of all
115 people, should know better!"
119 "Reform Judaism. You don't even take your own lies seriously! I
120 bet seven-eighths of the congregation only shows up twice a
121 year---and a lot of them wouldn't come if you didn't cap the
122 services at two-and-a-quarter hours." She shrugged, denying
127 "This is just like 'What the Tortise Said to Achilles.' You
128 accept that A, and you accept that A-implies-B, but you don't
131 "I disagree about the applicability to our current dispute, but
132 the Tortise had a point." Now Wesley
134 [...] "It's a subtle issue in the philosophy of logic. To
135 clarify, I'm not asserting that there's any possible world where
136 not-A, B, and B-or-not-A are all true, but there are all sorts of
137 foundational issues that have to be dealt with that explain why I
138 can say that. Just because the obvious answer turns out to be
139 right, doesn't mean it's right for the obvious reasons." Wesley
140 nodded, deferring to her expertise for the moment. "This is
141 off-topic, though," he said, "Can I add it to the list?" "Sure."
142 They kept a list clipped to the refrigerator of topics they
147 "You're lying! Stop lying!"
149 "Now that's unfair even conditional on you being right about the
150 object-level issue. If I'm mistaken, by all means let it be said
151 that I'm mistaken, but---"
153 "Self-deception, then."
155 "I hate that term. What's the model being implied? That some
156 subsystem of my brain knows the truth, but insists on lying to
159 "Something like that."
161 ”Well, that's hardly parsimonious.”
163 "I'm not angry at you---"
167 A moment of introspection confirmed her observation.
169 "Okay, you're right," he said. "I am angry, but it's not endrosed
170 upon reflection. It's just—Rachel, you're the most beautiful
171 person I've ever met."
173 "And when you say beautiful, you really mean intelligent."
177 "I don't want to discuss this anymore."
181 “The Komologrov complexity of the God hypothesis is---”
183 Rachel burst out laughing. Wesley didn't know how to respond, not
184 being aware of having told a joke.
188 “Komologrov complexity!” she howled. “Neither of us has the
189 expertise to talk about that. You're just throwing around big
190 words without knowing what they mean.”
196 "Until you can see that which the evidence supports and what I
197 believe as manifestations of the same thing, then you don't
198 understand this belief business at all."
200 "Wesley, please stop—"
202 "If you could just stop rationalizing backwards from your
203 familiar conclusion—"
207 "And look at the actual details of your thought process—"
209 "You're hurting me!" And she burst into tears. Wesley rushed to
210 hug her, to try to comfort her, but she pushed him away. “Don't
211 touch me! Don't touch me!” she yelled as she continued sobbing.
212 Wesley didn't know what he could say, what he could do; one
213 moment it had just been one of their usual philosophical
214 disusssions, and then the next Rachel was in these hysterics.
216 “I'm sorry,” he said. “I'm sorry; I'm sorry.” Except he wasn't
217 really sorry; he believed everything he had said.
219 Then there was a knock on the door. Rachel was still crying, and
220 Wesley still didn't know how to comfort her. At a loss for what
221 else to do, he walked over to get the door.
223 It was Jude and Charlotte, the couple who lived in the next
224 apartment. Wesley wondered how he looked, standing dumbly before
225 them with Rachel still sobbing in the background.
227 “Uh, hi,” said Jude, “We just wanted to make sure that everything
230 “Uh, yeah,” said Wesley. “Rachel and I were just---having a
231 discussion,” he continued, conscious of how unconvincing this
232 must have been although true. He looked back at Rachel, who had
233 stopped crying for the moment, and who was looking earnestly at
234 Jude and Charlotte earnestly. “Yes,” she said.
236 “Um, would you like to come in for tea?” Wesley said lamely.
240 -------------------------------------------
243 Wesley's reverie was interrupted by a noise: a sharp ping, almost
244 metallic in nature. At first he could not be sure that he had
245 heard it at all. The ping was accompanied by a slight distortion
246 in the edge of his visual field, which Wesley could not describe
247 in any way except to say that it had been there. Wesley reacted
248 with a bit of a start, but then a moment later he began to doubt
249 that he was reacting to anything at all---surely he was but
252 He had hardly but a moment to consider this possibility when the
253 ping came again, and again the distortion at the edge of his
254 vision. And before he had time still yet to consider this, the
255 ping and the distortion came yet again, and Wesley realized that
256 there was nothing mysterious about the matter: it was just, after
257 all, the intra-office instant messaging system: his boss Eric was
258 IMing him, and Wesley had been so lost in thought that he didn't
259 properly interpret the audio and visual prompts. The distortion
260 in his sight was just the messages appearing in the corner of his
261 monitor, in his peripheral vision, as it turned out, as he had
262 been staring into the space to the right of his monitor.
264 The messages in the lower-right side of the screen read:
270 Eric Dalton: See me in my office
276 Wesley read the words, duly, dully, but it took him a few moments
277 to fully register their meaning.
281 "Have you done any work at all during the past three weeks?"
282 Wesley's instinct was to lie or change the subject, but he pushed
283 the feeling away, not because (or at least, not only because) it
284 would never have worked anyway, but because he had a self-image
285 to maintain. He was an honest person.
287 "No," he said quietly.
289 "What have you been doing the past three weeks?" It was the
290 strangest thing, but Wesley didn't know. He was sure his memory
291 had suffered no damage. He could remember moments in isolation,
292 but somehow he couldn't reconstruct the gestalt, how the moments
297 "That's about what I guessed," said Eric. "You're fired. Have
298 your desk cleaned out by noon tomorrow. Goodbye, and good---" he
299 paused, and Wesley was expecting him to say riddance, "luck."
301 "Don't I get two weeks notice?"
303 "Did you give me two weeks notice before you stopped doing
304 things?" Wesley nodded, slowly, to acknowledge the righteousness
305 of the question, if not to answer it. He backed away a few steps,
306 turned, left the office, saying nothing more, walking swiftly
307 down the hallway, past the water cooler, and then quickening his
308 pace to a jog. He could come back for the stuff in his cubicle
309 tomorrow, right now he just wanted to get out, out, out. No one
310 saw him and no one spoke to him, as he jogged down the stairwell,
311 and out of the building, out onto the sidewalk. He couldn't say
312 why it was so important to him that he be outdoors in this
313 moment, why it was important to get his body out into the cold
314 air before the previous two minutes's events really hit him hard.
316 The city was beautiful in the rain. He began to cry, and the
317 thought occured to him that it had to have been because the city
318 was so beautiful in the rain; there was no other possible reason
319 he could be crying at this moment. A woman with an umbrella
320 passing by gave him a funny look, but he just stared blankly past
321 her, trying to blink back the tears, failing miserably at this,
322 and then sobbing a bit more.
324 The city was beautiful because of its awesomeness---with an
325 unquestionable solemnity, he was certain that was the right word.
326 The rain and the clouds were a natural process, but nearly
327 everything else in his vision was gloriously artificial; it had
328 been built by humans. For years, he had held himself with a sense
329 of superiority over others. He thought he was better than
330 ordinary people, because he knew more science, because he had
331 glimpsed deeply into the true structure of the world, while they
332 (it was always an amorphous they) surely just went about their
333 daily lives, not knowing, not seeing what he and similarly
334 well-read people could see.
336 But ultimately---did it matter? From the inside, anyone can see
337 that they're right, so the test of a true science was that you
338 didn't need to see it from the inside. You could know them by
339 their works: a bridge that stays up, software that doesn't crash,
340 happy and healthy people that can hold jobs and earn PhDs.
341 Whatever nonsense people professed, they had to be successfully
342 dealing with reality in some way, operating as well-designed
343 mapping engines and choice machines, or their plans couldn't
344 possibly work. That was what it meant for a theory to be true
345 whether or not you believed it---it didn't matter whether or not
348 "I'm not as smart as I thought," he said aloud.
350 Until you can see that which I should be doing and what I'm doing
351 as manifestations of the same thing, then you don't understand
352 this choice business at all. And if he could just stop
353 rationalizing backwards from his familiar behavior—and look at
354 the actual details of his decision process---
356 But he refused. It was easier not to look, not to notice. He had
357 solved one other problem, though. He unclipped his cell phone
358 from his belt (the device's stolid presence better testimony to
359 the nature of this world than a thousand lectures on physics) and
360 called Rachel. The morning Yom Kippur service should have been
361 over; she would have her phone on. "Hello," she said. "Wesley?"
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blob