+Title: Blindspot
+Date: 2021-01-01 5:00
+Category: fiction
+Tags: epistemic horror
+Status: draft
+
+"I don't understand," muttered Wesley to himself, examining the
+reflections off of the surface of the water in his paper cup. It
+was raining outside and the drops falling outside the window made
+[...]
+
+"What don't you understand?" Wesley was startled; he wasn't
+prepared for his private mutterings to be eavesdropped upon. In
+this case it was just Charles, one of the programmers. Wesley
+didn't like the man, but at the moment he couldn't recall exactly
+why.
+
+"My girlfriend."
+
+Charles laughed, a natural, confident laugh. "Hey, women, right?
+Where to begin?" Wesley sighed; Charles's casual misogyny was so
+many worlds distant from Wesley's actual relationship problems
+that Wesley didn't think he had much hope of communicating with
+the man.
+
+"It's not like that," Wesley said. "She's a theist. It doesn't
+make any sense."
+
+"Uh---" Charles was too self-possessed to be described as
+uncomfortable exactly, but Wesley could tell that he had put the
+other man off guard; whether it was because Charles himself was
+religious or just didn't think the subject appropirate for
+workplace office cooler banter, or whether he simply had trouble
+parsing the sentence and didn't feel like saying “What?”, Wesley
+couldn't say. Charles decided to change the subject to something
+work-related.
+
+"So, did you finish the help module we were talking about the
+other day?"
+
+"Still working on it," said Wesley tersely, "I'll get back to
+you---Thursday?" Charles gave him another look that he didn't
+quite know how to interpret, and left. Wesley finshed his water
+cup, and proceeded to his own cubicle. It was best to put last
+night's dispute with Rachel out of his mind; he would think it
+over on his own time, and somehow patch things up with Rachel.
+Now it was time to work! He was a techinical writer at a midsized
+software company in the city; his job was to write help
+documentation for the company's products. It may have been a
+modest position---certainly relative to Wesley's native
+talents---but he found the work fairly engaging (at times), and
+it paid well enough, and the conditions were comfortable.
+
+But when pondering the benefits of his position, before pay and
+perks, he was proud of his role in the scheme of things. When
+some hapless user out there found him- or herself befuddled by
+the company's products, it was his job to make sure that when
+they came to read the freaking manual that the manual was clear
+and helpful. If he communicated poorly, then who could say what
+the toll would be on the hapless users? And if he wrote well,
+then he similarly did not know how to calculate how much smoother
+their days would go. The point was, even if he was not a
+programmer---yet, he reminded himself that he would need to
+finish that Sudoku solver in Python one of these days---he had a
+place in the great world economy; he made a difference; he
+created value, and was paid for it. He swore---as a ceremonial
+gesture for his own amusement, there being no God or spirit of
+honor to accept the gesture---that in a lesser or a greater job,
+he would always seek to do his work to the best of his ability.
+So resolved, he maximized the appropriate window in preparation
+to begin writing, but---oh, hell, he was still so preoccupied by
+the dispute with Rachel last night.
+
+He kept remembering, wanting to examine his every line. He didn't
+regret having challenged Rachel's (so uncharacteristic, so
+perplexing!) superstition, but surely there must have been a
+better way for him to have phrased things, some rhetorical
+strategy he could have taken to point out her blindspot, this one
+irrationality that was so inconsistent with the rest of her
+being. His rhetorical performance had been lacking, he could tell
+that---indeed, who could say but that he had made things worse?
+But knowing that he had spoke wrongly (even as he was right)
+didn't tell him what he should have said instead. It was said
+that hindsight is 20/20, but sometimes even hindsight was blind.
+He tried to keep his mind on the sacred work, set his hands to
+the keyboard, but memories from last night kept invading his
+thoughts.
+
+
+-------------------------------------------
+
+
+Rachel had come home late. "Wow, you're home late," said Wesley.
+"Sorry I didn't make dinner for us; I had soup. Where have you
+been?"
+
+Rachel answered both questions in stride. "Don't worry about
+dinner, I'm fasting until this time tomorrow. I was at the Kol
+Nidre service at Beth Shalom." She cocked her head, looking at
+him. "I thought you knew."
+
+"I thought you were joking," he deadpanned.
+
+"Wesley, It's Yom Kippur. This is the day when my people atone
+for our sins of the previous year."
+
+"I can hardly object to a day to regret one's wrongdoings, but
+why do have to bring 'your people'---scare quotes---and their
+primitive superstitions into it? Maybe it made sense for a bunch
+of nomadic goatherders three thousand years ago," he said,
+although regretting the concession immediately: whatever
+disadvantages the authors of the Old Testament had had, he didn't
+want to excuse anyone for believing falsehood. "But that was a
+long time ago," he continued, "We have science now. You, of all
+people, should know better!"
+
+[...]
+
+"Reform Judaism. You don't even take your own lies seriously! I
+bet seven-eighths of the congregation only shows up twice a
+year---and a lot of them wouldn't come if you didn't cap the
+services at two-and-a-quarter hours." She shrugged, denying
+nothing.
+
+[...]
+
+"This is just like 'What the Tortise Said to Achilles.' You
+accept that A, and you accept that A-implies-B, but you don't
+accept B!"
+
+"I disagree about the applicability to our current dispute, but
+the Tortise had a point." Now Wesley
+
+[...] "It's a subtle issue in the philosophy of logic. To
+clarify, I'm not asserting that there's any possible world where
+not-A, B, and B-or-not-A are all true, but there are all sorts of
+foundational issues that have to be dealt with that explain why I
+can say that. Just because the obvious answer turns out to be
+right, doesn't mean it's right for the obvious reasons." Wesley
+nodded, deferring to her expertise for the moment. "This is
+off-topic, though," he said, "Can I add it to the list?" "Sure."
+They kept a list clipped to the refrigerator of topics they
+wanted to discuss.
+
+[...]
+
+"You're lying! Stop lying!"
+
+"Now that's unfair even conditional on you being right about the
+object-level issue. If I'm mistaken, by all means let it be said
+that I'm mistaken, but---"
+
+"Self-deception, then."
+
+"I hate that term. What's the model being implied? That some
+subsystem of my brain knows the truth, but insists on lying to
+the rest of me?"
+
+"Something like that."
+
+”Well, that's hardly parsimonious.”
+
+"I'm not angry at you---"
+
+"Yes you are.”
+
+A moment of introspection confirmed her observation.
+
+"Okay, you're right," he said. "I am angry, but it's not endrosed
+upon reflection. It's just—Rachel, you're the most beautiful
+person I've ever met."
+
+"And when you say beautiful, you really mean intelligent."
+
+"Of course."
+
+"I don't want to discuss this anymore."
+
+[...]
+
+“The Komologrov complexity of the God hypothesis is---”
+
+Rachel burst out laughing. Wesley didn't know how to respond, not
+being aware of having told a joke.
+
+“Uh---what's funny?”
+
+“Komologrov complexity!” she howled. “Neither of us has the
+expertise to talk about that. You're just throwing around big
+words without knowing what they mean.”
+
+Wesley flushed.
+
+[...]
+
+"Until you can see that which the evidence supports and what I
+believe as manifestations of the same thing, then you don't
+understand this belief business at all."
+
+"Wesley, please stop—"
+
+"If you could just stop rationalizing backwards from your
+familiar conclusion—"
+
+"No. Stop—"
+
+"And look at the actual details of your thought process—"
+
+"You're hurting me!" And she burst into tears. Wesley rushed to
+hug her, to try to comfort her, but she pushed him away. “Don't
+touch me! Don't touch me!” she yelled as she continued sobbing.
+Wesley didn't know what he could say, what he could do; one
+moment it had just been one of their usual philosophical
+disusssions, and then the next Rachel was in these hysterics.
+
+“I'm sorry,” he said. “I'm sorry; I'm sorry.” Except he wasn't
+really sorry; he believed everything he had said.
+
+Then there was a knock on the door. Rachel was still crying, and
+Wesley still didn't know how to comfort her. At a loss for what
+else to do, he walked over to get the door.
+
+It was Jude and Charlotte, the couple who lived in the next
+apartment. Wesley wondered how he looked, standing dumbly before
+them with Rachel still sobbing in the background.
+
+“Uh, hi,” said Jude, “We just wanted to make sure that everything
+is all right.”
+
+“Uh, yeah,” said Wesley. “Rachel and I were just---having a
+discussion,” he continued, conscious of how unconvincing this
+must have been although true. He looked back at Rachel, who had
+stopped crying for the moment, and who was looking earnestly at
+Jude and Charlotte earnestly. “Yes,” she said.
+
+“Um, would you like to come in for tea?” Wesley said lamely.
+[...]
+
+
+-------------------------------------------
+
+
+Wesley's reverie was interrupted by a noise: a sharp ping, almost
+metallic in nature. At first he could not be sure that he had
+heard it at all. The ping was accompanied by a slight distortion
+in the edge of his visual field, which Wesley could not describe
+in any way except to say that it had been there. Wesley reacted
+with a bit of a start, but then a moment later he began to doubt
+that he was reacting to anything at all---surely he was but
+imagining things.
+
+He had hardly but a moment to consider this possibility when the
+ping came again, and again the distortion at the edge of his
+vision. And before he had time still yet to consider this, the
+ping and the distortion came yet again, and Wesley realized that
+there was nothing mysterious about the matter: it was just, after
+all, the intra-office instant messaging system: his boss Eric was
+IMing him, and Wesley had been so lost in thought that he didn't
+properly interpret the audio and visual prompts. The distortion
+in his sight was just the messages appearing in the corner of his
+monitor, in his peripheral vision, as it turned out, as he had
+been staring into the space to the right of his monitor.
+
+The messages in the lower-right side of the screen read:
+
+
+Eric Dalton: Wes
+
+
+Eric Dalton: See me in my office
+
+
+Eric Dalton: ASAP
+
+
+Wesley read the words, duly, dully, but it took him a few moments
+to fully register their meaning.
+
+[...]
+
+"Have you done any work at all during the past three weeks?"
+Wesley's instinct was to lie or change the subject, but he pushed
+the feeling away, not because (or at least, not only because) it
+would never have worked anyway, but because he had a self-image
+to maintain. He was an honest person.
+
+"No," he said quietly.
+
+"What have you been doing the past three weeks?" It was the
+strangest thing, but Wesley didn't know. He was sure his memory
+had suffered no damage. He could remember moments in isolation,
+but somehow he couldn't reconstruct the gestalt, how the moments
+added up into days.
+
+He said nothing.
+
+"That's about what I guessed," said Eric. "You're fired. Have
+your desk cleaned out by noon tomorrow. Goodbye, and good---" he
+paused, and Wesley was expecting him to say riddance, "luck."
+
+"Don't I get two weeks notice?"
+
+"Did you give me two weeks notice before you stopped doing
+things?" Wesley nodded, slowly, to acknowledge the righteousness
+of the question, if not to answer it. He backed away a few steps,
+turned, left the office, saying nothing more, walking swiftly
+down the hallway, past the water cooler, and then quickening his
+pace to a jog. He could come back for the stuff in his cubicle
+tomorrow, right now he just wanted to get out, out, out. No one
+saw him and no one spoke to him, as he jogged down the stairwell,
+and out of the building, out onto the sidewalk. He couldn't say
+why it was so important to him that he be outdoors in this
+moment, why it was important to get his body out into the cold
+air before the previous two minutes's events really hit him hard.
+
+The city was beautiful in the rain. He began to cry, and the
+thought occured to him that it had to have been because the city
+was so beautiful in the rain; there was no other possible reason
+he could be crying at this moment. A woman with an umbrella
+passing by gave him a funny look, but he just stared blankly past
+her, trying to blink back the tears, failing miserably at this,
+and then sobbing a bit more.
+
+The city was beautiful because of its awesomeness---with an
+unquestionable solemnity, he was certain that was the right word.
+The rain and the clouds were a natural process, but nearly
+everything else in his vision was gloriously artificial; it had
+been built by humans. For years, he had held himself with a sense
+of superiority over others. He thought he was better than
+ordinary people, because he knew more science, because he had
+glimpsed deeply into the true structure of the world, while they
+(it was always an amorphous they) surely just went about their
+daily lives, not knowing, not seeing what he and similarly
+well-read people could see.
+
+But ultimately---did it matter? From the inside, anyone can see
+that they're right, so the test of a true science was that you
+didn't need to see it from the inside. You could know them by
+their works: a bridge that stays up, software that doesn't crash,
+happy and healthy people that can hold jobs and earn PhDs.
+Whatever nonsense people professed, they had to be successfully
+dealing with reality in some way, operating as well-designed
+mapping engines and choice machines, or their plans couldn't
+possibly work. That was what it meant for a theory to be true
+whether or not you believed it---it didn't matter whether or not
+you believed it.
+
+"I'm not as smart as I thought," he said aloud.
+
+Until you can see that which I should be doing and what I'm doing
+as manifestations of the same thing, then you don't understand
+this choice business at all. And if he could just stop
+rationalizing backwards from his familiar behavior—and look at
+the actual details of his decision process---
+
+But he refused. It was easier not to look, not to notice. He had
+solved one other problem, though. He unclipped his cell phone
+from his belt (the device's stolid presence better testimony to
+the nature of this world than a thousand lectures on physics) and
+called Rachel. The morning Yom Kippur service should have been
+over; she would have her phone on. "Hello," she said. "Wesley?"
+
+"Now I understand."
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff