You ever see that episode of The Twilight Zone where a burglar dies and gets sent to Heaven? And there he gets everything he desires at all times with no effort or risk forever? And he quickly goes insane out of boredom and realizes he’s actually in Hell?
I feel like that’s the life of the devil sitting on Trump’s shoulder.
I feel like if I got everything I wanted at all times with no effort or risk forever, I might eventually get bored … but I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be ‘quickly’.
He can’t take it from boredom within a month, which I think is fairly quickly even without comparing it to eternity.
If he plays a game of billiards, he magically sinks all 15 balls in the break. He wins every game he plays at the casino. His entourage of attractive women are functionally robots. None of the other people are real, because they definitionally can’t be (and he’s told as much). He’s rich beyond his wildest dreams, but the money he spent his entire life scrounging for is suddenly meaningless. Even if he tries to make it so he doesn’t always win (the example being wanting to rob a bank), he knows ahead of time a single numerical probability that he’ll succeed.
And creature comforts only get you so far. Farther than a month until you can’t take it? Probably. Although the burglar is portrayed as craving the risk-taking of his former life (edit: and reading between the lines, part of the reason it’s so torturous for him specifically is because all he ever wants is to win). And it’d definitely happen eventually, which in the context of infinity is a blip.
Watch the episode, it’s a lot more clear than listening to a one line summary.
Imagine if every book you picked up had the exact story you were thinking of. There would be zero surprise, zero imagination in the writing. You wouldn’t learn anything because it’s only what you expect.
Now you want some food, it’s the most intensely rich, perfect food you want. But the exact same of your favorite food every time. No variation, no imperfections.
You go to play a video game and you win with no effort having only clicked the absolute minimum needed to solve every step of the way.
That’s what the story is about.
On the surface, it seems like it would be great, and maybe it would be for an afternoon, but very quickly it would become a nightmare.
Imagine if every book you picked up had the exact story you were thinking of. There would be zero surprise, zero imagination in the writing. You wouldn’t learn anything because it’s only what you expect.
So, what if I wanted to read The Lord of the Rings trilogy? Plenty of actually existing books out there I could ask for as part of ‘everything I wanted’. And the content of those books shouldn’t change. If they did, then those wouldn’t be the books I wanted. And if I get tired of the books I’m already familiar with, well, I sure could add ‘a list of all books in my old local library’ as a thing I want, and then I know a bunch more books to ask for.
And what kind of 3rd-rate dystopia is this if ‘everything I wanted’ can’t include a specific book I asked for?
Now you want some food, it’s the most intensely rich, perfect food you want. But the exact same of your favorite food every time. No variation, no imperfections.
Only one kind of food? That’s not ‘everything I wanted’ – I already want more than one type of food, and I haven’t even had my ‘perfect’ food yet!
No imperfections is fine, but ‘everything I wanted’ will have to include quite a bit of variation, because I want variety.
You go to play a video game and you win with no effort
Video games I’ll give you, I guess. In this kind of world, video games might be so easy they’re boring … even if I asked for a specific, already-existing game, there would still never be any challenge in beating it because I just magically play it perfectly every time.
But, hey, lots of boredom-abolishing entertainment out there that doesn’t require audience participation the way video games do. Not just books, but movies, TV shows, art, maybe even stage plays, the works. Pretty sure I could keep myself amused for decades at least, given free access to all of that. There’s no way to ‘instantly win’ reading a book or watching a TV show. The experience of it will have to be pretty much the same as it is now … except that I’ve got literally all the time in the world for it, and no barriers to access. Ooh – you know what? I think I’ll start with the lost Doctor Who episodes, the ones that have never been seen since they first aired decades ago. That should be interesting.
Honestly, seems to be trying too hard to make this scenario sound awful when, really, it could be pretty great for someone with a bit of imagination.
It’s tailored specifically to torture you. You can’t game it, you can’t use your imagination to make it better. The more you try, the more you lose by thinking you can win.
They control everything, because it’s literally magic designed to make you suffer.
But, I mean, if ‘everything I wanted’ included a library of good books, I think I’d be happy for a few years at least.
Probably. This is something I thought a lot about when considering “Heaven” and its eternity: you eventually know everything there is to know about anything you could possibly interested in, and you eventually have all the conversations you could have. But this version of Hell makes it “worse” (not technically, because any finite time against eternity is infinitesimal, but you get the point).
If you’ve ever read the fairytale “The Magic Thread”, you know what the problem is. Namely that you could learn the contents of any book in an instant. You could skip any boring chapter you wanted and still be able to recite it word for word. Any boring paragraph even. Boring sentence. You could know everything there ever was to know in a nanosecond. There’s nothing stopping you, and you don’t even have to wish for it aloud or anything.
Pretty much inevitably, a human will start to optimize the fun out of reading, because they’ll be a little bit bored and skip to the exciting part with all the requisite knowledge. Without material barriers, this will keep snowballing.
And, of course, probably one of the few things you can’t do is just reset yourself to forget, since that goes against the torture.
You ever see that episode of The Twilight Zone where a burglar dies and gets sent to Heaven? And there he gets everything he desires at all times with no effort or risk forever? And he quickly goes insane out of boredom and realizes he’s actually in Hell?
I feel like that’s the life of the devil sitting on Trump’s shoulder.
I feel like if I got everything I wanted at all times with no effort or risk forever, I might eventually get bored … but I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be ‘quickly’.
He can’t take it from boredom within a month, which I think is fairly quickly even without comparing it to eternity.
If he plays a game of billiards, he magically sinks all 15 balls in the break. He wins every game he plays at the casino. His entourage of attractive women are functionally robots. None of the other people are real, because they definitionally can’t be (and he’s told as much). He’s rich beyond his wildest dreams, but the money he spent his entire life scrounging for is suddenly meaningless. Even if he tries to make it so he doesn’t always win (the example being wanting to rob a bank), he knows ahead of time a single numerical probability that he’ll succeed.
And creature comforts only get you so far. Farther than a month until you can’t take it? Probably. Although the burglar is portrayed as craving the risk-taking of his former life (edit: and reading between the lines, part of the reason it’s so torturous for him specifically is because all he ever wants is to win). And it’d definitely happen eventually, which in the context of infinity is a blip.
Yeah, for a character like that, sure.
But, I mean, if ‘everything I wanted’ included a library of good books, I think I’d be happy for a few years at least.
Watch the episode, it’s a lot more clear than listening to a one line summary.
Imagine if every book you picked up had the exact story you were thinking of. There would be zero surprise, zero imagination in the writing. You wouldn’t learn anything because it’s only what you expect.
Now you want some food, it’s the most intensely rich, perfect food you want. But the exact same of your favorite food every time. No variation, no imperfections.
You go to play a video game and you win with no effort having only clicked the absolute minimum needed to solve every step of the way.
That’s what the story is about.
On the surface, it seems like it would be great, and maybe it would be for an afternoon, but very quickly it would become a nightmare.
So, what if I wanted to read The Lord of the Rings trilogy? Plenty of actually existing books out there I could ask for as part of ‘everything I wanted’. And the content of those books shouldn’t change. If they did, then those wouldn’t be the books I wanted. And if I get tired of the books I’m already familiar with, well, I sure could add ‘a list of all books in my old local library’ as a thing I want, and then I know a bunch more books to ask for.
And what kind of 3rd-rate dystopia is this if ‘everything I wanted’ can’t include a specific book I asked for?
Only one kind of food? That’s not ‘everything I wanted’ – I already want more than one type of food, and I haven’t even had my ‘perfect’ food yet!
No imperfections is fine, but ‘everything I wanted’ will have to include quite a bit of variation, because I want variety.
Video games I’ll give you, I guess. In this kind of world, video games might be so easy they’re boring … even if I asked for a specific, already-existing game, there would still never be any challenge in beating it because I just magically play it perfectly every time.
But, hey, lots of boredom-abolishing entertainment out there that doesn’t require audience participation the way video games do. Not just books, but movies, TV shows, art, maybe even stage plays, the works. Pretty sure I could keep myself amused for decades at least, given free access to all of that. There’s no way to ‘instantly win’ reading a book or watching a TV show. The experience of it will have to be pretty much the same as it is now … except that I’ve got literally all the time in the world for it, and no barriers to access. Ooh – you know what? I think I’ll start with the lost Doctor Who episodes, the ones that have never been seen since they first aired decades ago. That should be interesting.
Honestly, seems to be trying too hard to make this scenario sound awful when, really, it could be pretty great for someone with a bit of imagination.
You don’t get it. It’s literally hell.
It’s tailored specifically to torture you. You can’t game it, you can’t use your imagination to make it better. The more you try, the more you lose by thinking you can win.
They control everything, because it’s literally magic designed to make you suffer.
It’s fiction.
Yep. The afterlife is tailored to the individual. If you’re a sinner when you die, the books will probably all be missing their second half.
The Twilight Zone ironically has its own infamous suggestion for what Hell looks like for an avid reader.
Probably. This is something I thought a lot about when considering “Heaven” and its eternity: you eventually know everything there is to know about anything you could possibly interested in, and you eventually have all the conversations you could have. But this version of Hell makes it “worse” (not technically, because any finite time against eternity is infinitesimal, but you get the point).
If you’ve ever read the fairytale “The Magic Thread”, you know what the problem is. Namely that you could learn the contents of any book in an instant. You could skip any boring chapter you wanted and still be able to recite it word for word. Any boring paragraph even. Boring sentence. You could know everything there ever was to know in a nanosecond. There’s nothing stopping you, and you don’t even have to wish for it aloud or anything.
Pretty much inevitably, a human will start to optimize the fun out of reading, because they’ll be a little bit bored and skip to the exciting part with all the requisite knowledge. Without material barriers, this will keep snowballing.
And, of course, probably one of the few things you can’t do is just reset yourself to forget, since that goes against the torture.