The Whispering Earring: A Magical Device That Always Knows Best
Clarity didn't work, trying mysterianism
I present a tale of the Whispering Earring, an artifact that offers infallible advice to maximize the wearer's happiness. While users achieve extraordinary success and contentment, the earring gradually bypasses their conscious reasoning, atrophying their neocortex until they become mere reflex-driven vessels. The story explores the terrifying trade-off between perfect optimization and the loss of true human agency.
It is well that we are so foolish, or what little freedom we have would be wasted on us.
- ShinyLeftPad
> The wearer lives an abnormally successful life
as soon as most people wear it "abnormally" becomes "normally".
logically the rare enlightened who refuse to wear it and instead keep their own [spoiler] become abnormal unsuccessful failures, not the other way around.
- eternauta3k
A philosopher or meditator should chime in here. Spending a modicum of time in meditation shows you that intentions just show up from nowhere, they're not "you". We might as well call the earring "your prefrontal cortex" (or whatever), and this would describe the current state of things.
- avaer
One of the more compelling (and scary) stories about how AI takes over the world. If you liked this, also check our Pluribus.
- Mikhail_Edoshin
This is a good companion to the yesterday's HN post of ten steps to happiness.
I've read that Malachi Martin described what he called "a perfect possession". I do not know where as I haven't found this piece myself. But the idea was that typical cases of demonic possession are imperfect, the victim is struggling, and the struggle is visible to the outsiders. A perfect possession does not manifest itself.
- andai
In the brain-chip case (or indeed already now, in the case of our rectangular appendages), some of the hisses and clicks come from mysterious sources beyond the earring.