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sayyadina773 's review for:
Permutation City
by Greg Egan
(SPOILERS)
Ahh, once again Greg Egan's work proves to be both fascinating and frustrating. This book, as in Schild's Ladder, takes on existential philosophy once more, but from the direction of artificial or simulated universes/intelligences.
In the not too distant future, human beings can clone themselves into an artificial framework, thus achieving some sort of immortality. Their clones take on subjective consciousness, though, and there is political turbulence over the "rights" and validity of this kind of "humanity". The main story, however, focuses on Paul Durham, a man obsessed with achieving true immortality and Maria Deluca, who ends up helping him. It doesn't matter if you can live unhindered in a computer, there is always threat from the outside of being shut down or coming to some end. True immortality would mean being completely independent and self-contained. He goes on to achieve this by using permutations. Permutation is a mathematical notion that is defined as "the act of arranging all the members of a set into some sequence or order, or if the set is already ordered, rearranging (reordering) its elements". (Wikipedia.) It is a little difficult to explain, but using this notion and combining it with a real theory by Max Tegmark called "Mathematical Universe Hypothesis," (which postulates our universe is a purely mathematical structure) Paul postulates his own theory called "The Dust Theory" that says consciousness/being/existence is not just bound by the physical laws, but that physics and mathematics are essentially the same, and that no matter how all the parts or numbers (to continue the analogy of math) that make up "him" are arranged, i.e. now matter how many different "self-universes" that arise from these interchangeable parts of himself, they are all equally real and so all his many different selves' experiences are equally real. And these multiple "self-universes" arise from their own mathematical self-consistency and nothing imposed upon from the "outside". So, in other words, Paul can seed an artificial world in a computing system, and then, although he pulls the plug in our world of physics, the artificial world and its cognizant clones live on purely on their own internal math, their personal conscious experience continues on.
Sound familiar?
"In simpler terms, existentialism is a philosophy concerned with finding self and the meaning of life through free will, choice, and personal responsibility. The belief is that people are searching to find out who and what they are throughout life as they make choices based on their experiences, beliefs, and outlook. And personal choices become unique without the necessity of an objective form of truth." Wikipedia.
Whereas Schild's Ladder focused on the "choices" that make up the whole, Permutation City attacks any "objective form of truth". Essentially, Mr. Egan is arguing against the existence of a Creator throughout the entire book, that there is no need for a Creator, that Existence *itself* is proof that there is NO Creator. That you either have self-existence or nothing.
I will say this story wasn't *as* heavy handed as Schild's Ladder, though that isn't saying much because this author makes his points pretty hardcore. (There is a religion he creates that is *literally* called "The Church of The God Who Makes No Difference.") But the characters here do seem to genuinely struggle with these ideas, grasping at a way to define themselves, what it means *to be* themselves, what is the true nature of identity. Actually many of them still seem to cling to some sort of "objective" reality to define themselves through their angst, but it is clear what the book is saying. To cling to an objective reality is a human weakness which leads to death and nothingness, because there is no objective reality, so therefore we must transcend that kind of humanity. All is truly subjective.
The Philosophy of Solipsism also comes into play, which is the main connected theme to go along with this crazy world. It is defined as: "from Latin solus, meaning "alone", and ipse, meaning "self") is the philosophical idea that only one's own mind is sure to exist. As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist outside of the mind. As a metaphysical position, solipsism goes further to the conclusion that the world and other minds do not exist." (Wikipedia).
Yep. And that's the story, folks.
So, what happens, is that Paul with the help of Maria *do* achieve immortality, through Permutation City, (a mathematical universe with absolutely no limits), but along the way they end up seeding another mathematical world in what is called the Autoverse, that ends up evolving with intelligent life. This mathematical world evolves to such an advance level it starts to break the laws of Permutation City. In a last ditch effort to save what they built, Maria and Paul try to convince the new intelligence that they are its "Creators", but that is impossible because existence precedes essence, which means existence itself creates its own reality, value, and definition. The intelligent life exists and defines itself, therefore, Paul and Maria and their city (or the physical world) cannot exist, i.e. no creators; they are completely undone by the self-reason of these aliens. Therefore, Permutation City breaks down into nothingness and Paul and Maria have to escape together into self-contained universes of their own in order to live on.
This is a really basic description of the story, there is *a lot* that happens, but that is the gist of it. Permutation City, in essence, symbolizes both the "Heaven" (i.e. God), that has to be destroyed and the "Existential Heaven of the Self" that catapults the characters into their own existential utopias, which is the main goal. It is truly astounding the level to which Greg Egan will go to make his point, and in many ways I have to admire it. He is self-consistent with his philosophy and he achieves the telling of it in truly unique and imaginative ways. I am fascinated by the worlds he creates, how he weaves mathematics, philosophy, and physics to create what are essentially dreamworlds. Reading one of his stories is like reading a dream to me, where characters are undeterred by physical limitations. Where everything is defined by the self, and characters move freely from one subjective reality to the next. It is all very otherworldly and incorporeal.
However, the self-absorbed audacity that permeates his work takes my breath away and ultimately sours the experience. There is no heart or humanity in his work. His characters are all very interchangeable, having slips of personality, but are always slaves to his ideas, and often times seem to change on a whim to fit in with his purpose. Such as when Paul argues THROUGHOUT MOST OF THE BOOK that all possible realities are real, that subjective experiences are all equally real, only for him to flip a switch at the very end and start arguing against the subjective experience of the aliens and wants to impose a creator, i.e. objective reality, on them. He also, all of a sudden, freaks out and decides he is tired of this "permutated" state of being and wants to cling to only one objective self. That came out of the blue, but it happened because Greg Egan loves to drive his points hard into the ground, and contrives every possible means necessary to do so. That kind of writing isn't organic or natural to plot or character, and it definitely isn't honest or inviting to his readers. I suppose you could say he argues like a true Existentialist. The great "I" defines all things and therefore it is absolute truth to the subjective reality of his world.
I will end this review, if anyone has read this far, with an excerpt from Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin Abbott (Awesome book, btw!). I think this excerpt defines everything about Greg Egan's writing and philosophy and I think it is the great danger to true, practiced existentialism:
"During my slumber I had another vision. I thought I was once again by the side of the sphere, whose lustrous hue comforted me and his gentle manner assured me that his wrath was no more. In my dream, we were moving together towards a tiny point of light. Although we were travelling quite swiftly, the point seemed to get no closer. As we continued to approach, my guide directed my attention toward the infinitesimally small point, and I thought I heard a slight humming noise issuing from the point, so slight indeed that even in the perfect stillness of the vacuum through which we soared, the sound did not reach our ears until we were almost upon it.
“Look here,” said the sphere, “in Flatland you have lived; of Lineland you have received a vision; and you have soared with me to the heights of Spaceland. Now, in order to complete the range of your experience, I bring you even to the realm of Pointland, the abyss of no dimensions.”
He continued. “Behold this miserable creature. The point is a being like ourselves, but confined to the non-dimensional realm. He is himself his own world, his own universe; of any other than himself he cannot imagine. He knows not length nor breadth nor height, for he has had no experience of them. He has no cognizance even of the number two, nor has he even conceived of plurality, for he himself is his one and all. Yet notice his perfect self-contentment, and so learn this lesson: to be self-contented is to be ignorant, and to aspire is better than to be blindly and impotently happy. Now, listen.”
He ceased talking, and there arose from the infinitesimal buzzing creature a tiny, low, monotonous but distinct tinkling, from which I caught these words: “Infinite beatitude of existence! It is, and there is none beside It.”
“What,” said I, “does the tiny creature mean by 'It'?” “He means himself,” said the sphere, “have you not noticed in your own world, as in mine, that babies and unfortunately deformed persons who cannot distinguish themselves from the world, speak of themselves in the third person? But, hush, let us listen further.”
“It fills all space,” continued the soliloquizing point, “and what It fills, It is. What It thinks, that It utters; and what It utters, that It hears; and It itself is Thinker, Utterer, Hearer, Thought, Word, Audition; It is the One, the All in All. Ah, the happiness, ah the happiness of being!”
“Can you not startle the thing out of its complacency?” I asked. “Tell it what it really is, as you told me; reveal to it the narrow limitations of Pointland, and lead it up to something higher.”
“That is no easy task,” said my master. “You try.”
Consequently I raised my voice to address the point. “Silence, silence you puny creature. You call yourself the All in All, but you are nothing; your so-called universe is a mere speck in a line, and a line is a mere shadow as compared with -.” “Hush, hush,” interrupted the sphere, “that's enough. Let us listen and see what effect your harangue has had on the king of Pointland.”
The luster of the monarch continued to beam brightly, and his complacency seemed to be as assured as ever. I had hardly ceased my words when he again took up his strain, “Ah, the joy, ah, the joy of thought! What can It not achieve by thinking? Its own thought coming to Itself, suggestive of Its disparagement, to enhance Its happiness! Sweet rebellion stirred up to result in Triumph! Ah, the divine power of the All in All, the One! Ah, the joy of being!”
“You see,” said my teacher, “how little your words have done. So far as the monarch understands them at all, he accepts them as his own, for he cannot conceive of any other except himself, and prides himself upon the variety of 'Its thought' as suggestive of creative power.” I was determined to give it one more try. I decided to abandon the path of trying to convince him of the limits of his land, and instead undertook the more moderate goal of convincing him of my existence. “Oh you, king of your realm. Hear me - I am not you, but outside of you. I am another like you, but different. I am not your thought, but a different being altogether. Hear me, and respond.”
Again, the point's luster was not diminished, and the humming continued just as before. “Ah, the joy of thought! It is All, It is One. It is different and the same. It is joy, pure joy! Yes, the joy of being!”
“You see,” said the sphere, “it is no use. Believe me, I, and others like me, have tried. He simply cannot imagine anything outside of himself. Come, let us leave this god of Pointland to the ignorant joy of his omnipresence and omniscience. Nothing you or I can do or say can rescue him from his own self-absorbed reality.”
Ahh, once again Greg Egan's work proves to be both fascinating and frustrating. This book, as in Schild's Ladder, takes on existential philosophy once more, but from the direction of artificial or simulated universes/intelligences.
In the not too distant future, human beings can clone themselves into an artificial framework, thus achieving some sort of immortality. Their clones take on subjective consciousness, though, and there is political turbulence over the "rights" and validity of this kind of "humanity". The main story, however, focuses on Paul Durham, a man obsessed with achieving true immortality and Maria Deluca, who ends up helping him. It doesn't matter if you can live unhindered in a computer, there is always threat from the outside of being shut down or coming to some end. True immortality would mean being completely independent and self-contained. He goes on to achieve this by using permutations. Permutation is a mathematical notion that is defined as "the act of arranging all the members of a set into some sequence or order, or if the set is already ordered, rearranging (reordering) its elements". (Wikipedia.) It is a little difficult to explain, but using this notion and combining it with a real theory by Max Tegmark called "Mathematical Universe Hypothesis," (which postulates our universe is a purely mathematical structure) Paul postulates his own theory called "The Dust Theory" that says consciousness/being/existence is not just bound by the physical laws, but that physics and mathematics are essentially the same, and that no matter how all the parts or numbers (to continue the analogy of math) that make up "him" are arranged, i.e. now matter how many different "self-universes" that arise from these interchangeable parts of himself, they are all equally real and so all his many different selves' experiences are equally real. And these multiple "self-universes" arise from their own mathematical self-consistency and nothing imposed upon from the "outside". So, in other words, Paul can seed an artificial world in a computing system, and then, although he pulls the plug in our world of physics, the artificial world and its cognizant clones live on purely on their own internal math, their personal conscious experience continues on.
Sound familiar?
"In simpler terms, existentialism is a philosophy concerned with finding self and the meaning of life through free will, choice, and personal responsibility. The belief is that people are searching to find out who and what they are throughout life as they make choices based on their experiences, beliefs, and outlook. And personal choices become unique without the necessity of an objective form of truth." Wikipedia.
Whereas Schild's Ladder focused on the "choices" that make up the whole, Permutation City attacks any "objective form of truth". Essentially, Mr. Egan is arguing against the existence of a Creator throughout the entire book, that there is no need for a Creator, that Existence *itself* is proof that there is NO Creator. That you either have self-existence or nothing.
I will say this story wasn't *as* heavy handed as Schild's Ladder, though that isn't saying much because this author makes his points pretty hardcore. (There is a religion he creates that is *literally* called "The Church of The God Who Makes No Difference.") But the characters here do seem to genuinely struggle with these ideas, grasping at a way to define themselves, what it means *to be* themselves, what is the true nature of identity. Actually many of them still seem to cling to some sort of "objective" reality to define themselves through their angst, but it is clear what the book is saying. To cling to an objective reality is a human weakness which leads to death and nothingness, because there is no objective reality, so therefore we must transcend that kind of humanity. All is truly subjective.
The Philosophy of Solipsism also comes into play, which is the main connected theme to go along with this crazy world. It is defined as: "from Latin solus, meaning "alone", and ipse, meaning "self") is the philosophical idea that only one's own mind is sure to exist. As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist outside of the mind. As a metaphysical position, solipsism goes further to the conclusion that the world and other minds do not exist." (Wikipedia).
Yep. And that's the story, folks.
So, what happens, is that Paul with the help of Maria *do* achieve immortality, through Permutation City, (a mathematical universe with absolutely no limits), but along the way they end up seeding another mathematical world in what is called the Autoverse, that ends up evolving with intelligent life. This mathematical world evolves to such an advance level it starts to break the laws of Permutation City. In a last ditch effort to save what they built, Maria and Paul try to convince the new intelligence that they are its "Creators", but that is impossible because existence precedes essence, which means existence itself creates its own reality, value, and definition. The intelligent life exists and defines itself, therefore, Paul and Maria and their city (or the physical world) cannot exist, i.e. no creators; they are completely undone by the self-reason of these aliens. Therefore, Permutation City breaks down into nothingness and Paul and Maria have to escape together into self-contained universes of their own in order to live on.
This is a really basic description of the story, there is *a lot* that happens, but that is the gist of it. Permutation City, in essence, symbolizes both the "Heaven" (i.e. God), that has to be destroyed and the "Existential Heaven of the Self" that catapults the characters into their own existential utopias, which is the main goal. It is truly astounding the level to which Greg Egan will go to make his point, and in many ways I have to admire it. He is self-consistent with his philosophy and he achieves the telling of it in truly unique and imaginative ways. I am fascinated by the worlds he creates, how he weaves mathematics, philosophy, and physics to create what are essentially dreamworlds. Reading one of his stories is like reading a dream to me, where characters are undeterred by physical limitations. Where everything is defined by the self, and characters move freely from one subjective reality to the next. It is all very otherworldly and incorporeal.
However, the self-absorbed audacity that permeates his work takes my breath away and ultimately sours the experience. There is no heart or humanity in his work. His characters are all very interchangeable, having slips of personality, but are always slaves to his ideas, and often times seem to change on a whim to fit in with his purpose. Such as when Paul argues THROUGHOUT MOST OF THE BOOK that all possible realities are real, that subjective experiences are all equally real, only for him to flip a switch at the very end and start arguing against the subjective experience of the aliens and wants to impose a creator, i.e. objective reality, on them. He also, all of a sudden, freaks out and decides he is tired of this "permutated" state of being and wants to cling to only one objective self. That came out of the blue, but it happened because Greg Egan loves to drive his points hard into the ground, and contrives every possible means necessary to do so. That kind of writing isn't organic or natural to plot or character, and it definitely isn't honest or inviting to his readers. I suppose you could say he argues like a true Existentialist. The great "I" defines all things and therefore it is absolute truth to the subjective reality of his world.
I will end this review, if anyone has read this far, with an excerpt from Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin Abbott (Awesome book, btw!). I think this excerpt defines everything about Greg Egan's writing and philosophy and I think it is the great danger to true, practiced existentialism:
"During my slumber I had another vision. I thought I was once again by the side of the sphere, whose lustrous hue comforted me and his gentle manner assured me that his wrath was no more. In my dream, we were moving together towards a tiny point of light. Although we were travelling quite swiftly, the point seemed to get no closer. As we continued to approach, my guide directed my attention toward the infinitesimally small point, and I thought I heard a slight humming noise issuing from the point, so slight indeed that even in the perfect stillness of the vacuum through which we soared, the sound did not reach our ears until we were almost upon it.
“Look here,” said the sphere, “in Flatland you have lived; of Lineland you have received a vision; and you have soared with me to the heights of Spaceland. Now, in order to complete the range of your experience, I bring you even to the realm of Pointland, the abyss of no dimensions.”
He continued. “Behold this miserable creature. The point is a being like ourselves, but confined to the non-dimensional realm. He is himself his own world, his own universe; of any other than himself he cannot imagine. He knows not length nor breadth nor height, for he has had no experience of them. He has no cognizance even of the number two, nor has he even conceived of plurality, for he himself is his one and all. Yet notice his perfect self-contentment, and so learn this lesson: to be self-contented is to be ignorant, and to aspire is better than to be blindly and impotently happy. Now, listen.”
He ceased talking, and there arose from the infinitesimal buzzing creature a tiny, low, monotonous but distinct tinkling, from which I caught these words: “Infinite beatitude of existence! It is, and there is none beside It.”
“What,” said I, “does the tiny creature mean by 'It'?” “He means himself,” said the sphere, “have you not noticed in your own world, as in mine, that babies and unfortunately deformed persons who cannot distinguish themselves from the world, speak of themselves in the third person? But, hush, let us listen further.”
“It fills all space,” continued the soliloquizing point, “and what It fills, It is. What It thinks, that It utters; and what It utters, that It hears; and It itself is Thinker, Utterer, Hearer, Thought, Word, Audition; It is the One, the All in All. Ah, the happiness, ah the happiness of being!”
“Can you not startle the thing out of its complacency?” I asked. “Tell it what it really is, as you told me; reveal to it the narrow limitations of Pointland, and lead it up to something higher.”
“That is no easy task,” said my master. “You try.”
Consequently I raised my voice to address the point. “Silence, silence you puny creature. You call yourself the All in All, but you are nothing; your so-called universe is a mere speck in a line, and a line is a mere shadow as compared with -.” “Hush, hush,” interrupted the sphere, “that's enough. Let us listen and see what effect your harangue has had on the king of Pointland.”
The luster of the monarch continued to beam brightly, and his complacency seemed to be as assured as ever. I had hardly ceased my words when he again took up his strain, “Ah, the joy, ah, the joy of thought! What can It not achieve by thinking? Its own thought coming to Itself, suggestive of Its disparagement, to enhance Its happiness! Sweet rebellion stirred up to result in Triumph! Ah, the divine power of the All in All, the One! Ah, the joy of being!”
“You see,” said my teacher, “how little your words have done. So far as the monarch understands them at all, he accepts them as his own, for he cannot conceive of any other except himself, and prides himself upon the variety of 'Its thought' as suggestive of creative power.” I was determined to give it one more try. I decided to abandon the path of trying to convince him of the limits of his land, and instead undertook the more moderate goal of convincing him of my existence. “Oh you, king of your realm. Hear me - I am not you, but outside of you. I am another like you, but different. I am not your thought, but a different being altogether. Hear me, and respond.”
Again, the point's luster was not diminished, and the humming continued just as before. “Ah, the joy of thought! It is All, It is One. It is different and the same. It is joy, pure joy! Yes, the joy of being!”
“You see,” said the sphere, “it is no use. Believe me, I, and others like me, have tried. He simply cannot imagine anything outside of himself. Come, let us leave this god of Pointland to the ignorant joy of his omnipresence and omniscience. Nothing you or I can do or say can rescue him from his own self-absorbed reality.”