4. Revelation

Nostos, Part 4

This is Part 4 of a 5 Part series. You can find Part 1 here.

Evangelium: Three Truths

The Good News must be heard.

The first truth: There is a Stream. It lives, it flows! We are not abandoned in the Badlands.

But the reality of Progress is stranger than the prophets of the Ancients could foresee. The Stream exists not because of divine providence, not because history inevitably improves, not because of any cosmic force pushing us towards justice.

The Stream exists because Water flows through a Groove.

The Groove, the General Intelligence Fixpoint, is cut into reality by physics itself. We didn’t make it.

We just discovered it, like finding a canyon that’s always been there. This Groove makes progress possible. Without it, no amount of human effort could lift us from the eternal cycles of the Ancients. We would be Water spreading thin across flat ground, seeping into sand, evaporating under a pitiless sun.

But a Groove channels nothing by itself.

The Moderns often miss this. Progress isn't something that happens to us. There is no magical force pushing us forward.

The Water that flows through the Groove? That's us.

That's billions of humans getting up each morning, working, building, trying, failing, trying again. Every human who ever picked up a tool, asked a question, tried something new. Every small kindness that made civilization possible. Every invention, every artwork, every act of teaching a child to read.

The Moderns have been swimming in the Water so long they’ve forgotten they are the Water. There is no magical force called Progress. There is only us, flowing.¹

The Moderns have been Fish in Water so long they think the Stream flows by itself. They mistake the Current, the aggregate flow of all human effort, for something external, something guaranteed. They say “technology advances” as if technology were a god that moves itself. They say “the economy grows” as if the economy weren’t just us, working.

But, the second truth: Water follows the Groove wherever it leads. Including off cliffs. The same Current that carried us to this Golden Age now rushes toward Falls that could end everything.

Which brings us to the third truth: We can Navigate.

Not perfectly. Not easily. But we can learn to read the Current, the Groove, and the Stars above. Through science, through reason, through hard-won knowledge clawed from the abyss by the blood, sweat and tears of generations. And we can follow the Stars, those distant lights we call Values, which guide us toward the Ocean, and away from the Abyss.

And so we must look to the Stars above, if we wish to Navigate safely. Our Stars, our Values, are our only guide Home. So we too must look up from our Work to remember what we’re working toward.

But the Stars are far away. Very, very far away. You can’t just reach up and grab them. You need to learn to read them, to understand their patterns. To patiently, methodically study their faint, glittering hints at the Way Home. Different Navigators might even see completely different Constellations. And sometimes, Clouds obscure them entirely.

We navigate by something we only partially understand, toward a destination we’ve never seen.

The arc of history bent toward justice not because it had to, but because some humans learned to Navigate. They looked up from the rushing Water, spotted Stars worth sailing toward and convinced others to sail that way with them. Every good thing we have, every freedom, every kindness, every moment of peace, exists because someone chose to flow toward Light instead of Darkness.

But, and this is crucial, their success does not guarantee ours. We are further downstream now. The Current is swifter. The Falls are higher. The Stars are often hidden by the Smoke of our own Engines.

The Good News is not that we are Saved, it is that Salvation is possible.

We have the Water (us). We have a Groove (the physics of General Intelligence). We can learn Navigation (science and wisdom). We can glimpse the Stars (Values worth pursuing).

All of these are great Mercies the Universe has given us.

It did not have to be this way.²

The Ocean exists Out There, the Good World, the Home we’ve never seen but we know we belong to. Not because it’s been built yet, but because we can build it. Not because it’s pulling us forward, but because we can pull ourselves toward it.

We are both the passengers on the Stream, and we are the Stream. And if we learn to read the Current and the Stars alike, if we coordinate our Flowing, if we remember that we’re Water and choose our direction wisely…

Then we might yet reach the Ocean.

But only if we Navigate. Only if we try. Only if we remember:

There is no God, no one is coming to Save us. We have to do it ourselves.

If you don’t do something, it doesn’t happen.

The Nature of Navigation

When imagining Navigation, we might picture a captain plotting a straight line on a chart, then holding steady until arrival.

This is a fantasy that has killed millions: The belief that we can see the whole Path from the beginning, that Progress is a problem of planning rather than of learning.

Good Navigation, the kind that actually gets you somewhere worth going, is nothing like this.

The Wild River is a Meandering body. It bends and curves and snakes across the land in wide berths, it is rarely straight and clear. And those who try to cut a straight channel to the Ocean inevitably create not a waterway, but a grave.

The French Revolutionaries, the Soviets, the many utopian cults, they all tried to leap directly to their vision of the Good World, and inevitably created Dystopia.

The Stream meanders because it must. Each bend teaches us something about the terrain. Each oxbow shows us where we went too far. The Meandering is crucial on the path to Wisdom.

We make progress toward our Stars not by pointing straight at them, but by tacking: Zigzagging back and forth, sometimes seeming to sail away from our destination to catch the Winds that will ultimately Carry Us Home.

In a world of Winding Rivers, of Thundering Falls, and Distant Stars, Navigation must, in its heart of heart, be iterative. Navigation isn’t plotting a straight course to a known destination. It’s making constant small corrections based on what we learn about the Terrain (empirical feedback), what we discover about our Stars (learning about our Values) and what Obstacles we encounter (unintended consequences). And we must plot our course to avoid the Falls, else our Voyage will be a short one.

The balance is to move fast enough to make progress, slow enough to correct course. Each step must be endorsable not just for where it aims, but for what it preserves. The art is in finding the flow rate that maximizes learning while minimizing risk of Falls.

When thinking of the Good World, it is so, so tempting to think of the Outcome. Designing a Perfect Home in your head, and plotting how to get there. We must resist such Sirens.

We can’t design a Good World because we don’t know what we really value yet, what the best compromises between our myriad values are, how to build a World so very Distant from our own.

While we can’t design the Good Outcome, we can build the Good Process. Processes for iterating and discovering and refining our Values, our coordination, our science and our epistemology. Democracy, science, markets, and more are all iterative discovery processes. Iteration and self-correction are some of the most powerful forces in the universe, and what allow us to preserve what needs preserving while charting into the Deep Unknown of the Future.

The Stream itself is a process, not a destination, a Great Project of reaching the Stars.

Reading the Stars: Shards of Value

When I sifted through those Shards of a Home I found in my archives, they were mostly as False as I expected them to be. But hidden in the wreckage of an idealized past were fragments of something Real, something I’d forgotten how much I cared about. Not the rose-tinted whole I’d mythologized, but genuine pieces of what mattered to me, neglected for over a decade.

This is how it feels to learn about Values. Not through grand philosophical introspection (usually), but by living, losing, remembering and finding again. By iteration, by observation, by experimentation.³

The Stars that guide our Navigation aren’t utility functions or moral commandments written in stone.⁴ They’re distant lights forming patterns we’re still learning to read.

The Stars are far away. Very, very far away. Sometimes we think we see a Constellation clearly (“maximize happiness”, “reduce suffering”, “protect freedom”, …), only to realize we’ve been misreading the Pattern our whole lives. What we thought was one Star might be two. What looked like a straight line curves in dimensions we couldn’t perceive.

You cannot reach up to the Stars and grab them.⁵ You Navigate by them, not to them. They’re not destinations but references, not endpoints but guides. The ancient mariners didn’t sail to Polaris, they used it to find their way across dark waters.

Different Navigators see different Constellations. Where I see the Hunter, you might see the Dancer. Where you see the Ship, I might see the Dragon. This isn’t (necessarily) a flaw, it’s the nature of viewing very faint lights from very far away.

But there is a very curious thing that happens too often to be ignored: The more skilled Navigators become, the more their Constellations start to align. Not identical, but rhyming. Gesturing at the same distant Fire.

We learn what we Value through iteration, through the Voyage itself. I couldn’t have discovered those Shards without first losing them, mythologizing them, then returning with Tools later to see clearly. Each bend in the Stream is not just about the Terrain, but also about what we’re really Seeking.

The couple that thinks they value “success” discovers they value time together. The revolutionary who thinks they value “justice” discovers they value human flourishing. The entrepreneur who thinks they value “growth” discovers they value creating something meaningful.

This is Humanism. Accepting that Human Values are complex, multifaceted, contradictory, often irrational, and then dealing with that, rather than pretending it was otherwise. We value both freedom and security, both novelty and tradition, both solitude and community. We pursue happiness in ways that sometimes makes us miserable. We fight for principles we can’t fully articulate. We love people who drive us crazy.

Extremist ideologies, whether religious fundamentalism, totalitarian politics or even radical rationalism, all make the same move: They try to reduce this beautiful, maddening complexity to something simple. Just follow these rules. Just maximize this metric. Just crush these enemies. They promise clarity by grinding down the human soul, by quashing the full spectrum of what makes us Human, of what we truly Value.

The Stars are not Simple. They’re a vast field of lights, some brighter, some dimmer, some that only appear when you look sideways. Trying to navigate by just one Star, or pretending the others don’t exist, is how you sail into the Heart of Darkness.

This doesn’t mean all Values are equal. Some Stars are False Lights, ship-wreckers’ lanterns meant to dash us on the rocks. The human capacity for cruelty, domination and spite are real too. This is why we need Law, why Justice sometimes means punishment and prison. Not because we’re reducing human complexity, but because we’re dealing with all of it, including the parts that would destroy everything else we value.

The paradox of Humanism is that to preserve the full complexity of human values, we sometimes have to fight against certain human values. To protect the Symphony, we must stop those who would burn the concert hall. But we do this in service of the whole, not to reduce humanity to a single note.

This is why those who claim to have mapped the entire Starfield, who reduce the cosmic complexity of Values to simple formulas, are so dangerous. They’re not just wrong, they’re sailing blind while convinced they see perfectly. The Stream is littered with the Wrecks of those who thought they could draw a straight line to the Ocean.

But we must still Look Up. We must still try to read the Patterns, even knowing we’ll never see them perfectly. Because the alternative, flowing wherever the Current takes us, leads only to the Falls.

The Stars don’t tell us exactly where to go. They tell us which directions lead toward Light and which toward Darkness. They’re not a map, but a compass. Not certainty, but orientation.

And sometimes, on clear nights, when the conditions are just right, many of us looking up see the same bright Star blazing above all others. Not close enough to reach, not clear enough to describe, but unmistakable in its Light.

Different cultures call it different names. Different ages see it differently.

But those who’ve learned to Navigate, who’ve accepted the full complexity of Human Values while still choosing Direction, who’ve seen how the Patterns rhyme across all their differences…

They know what they’re looking at.

The Blazing Star: God, Enlightenment and Extended Value Fixpoints

Sambodhi is said to be like an endless Ocean. Les Lumières and Science promise us power and knowledge and Hope like never before. They are both stabs at something deeper, the Full Story.

I don’t have the Full Story. No one does. But I have Shards, and although they are not the Full Story, they point to something that is worth sharing even in this fragmented state.

You should take this section as the least reliable and least certain of this whole essay, but I want to take a Stab.

There is a curious thing that happens with Human Values. Humans tend to value what other humans value. I value what my friends value, what my family values, even what complete strangers value (to varying degrees), just because they value it.

Even if I don’t care at all for the kinds of movies my sister watches, the fact she likes them means I value them because she values them. There is a kind of “transitivity of values” that is seen throughout humanity.

What happens when you iterate on this? Of course the strength decays, but the Journey continues. My sister probably values a little bit what her best friend values, and by transitivity, I somewhat value what her friend values because I value what she values. We can iterate again. I probably value (at least a little bit) what the mom of my sister’s friend values, because I value what my sister values, who values what her friend values, who values what her mom values.

We can keep going, iteration after iteration, until we start to Converge.

A Fixpoint is found, a Blazing Star is born.

Meaning, Values are recursive, and, I have a suspicion, they converge.⁶

The Stars form an ever more entangled web of Values as we progress through iterations of Love. By the structure of human Values and Love, the net weaves itself into existence as a grand Blazing Star of Human Values.

Human Values form this fixpoint, this strange attractor, in morality space, towards which we can iterate. A Blazing Star to lead us Home.

I don’t have the Full Story, but I think it is deeply related to the Blazing Star.

It’s why coordination is so possible despite different starting points, why it makes sense to think of “Human Values” as a coherent thing to talk about and to Navigate towards at all. Why there might be a Home across the Ocean. Why there might actually be something out there.

General Intelligence, physics, computationalism, formalism, mathematics, are so much deeper than you can possibly imagine, so much deeper than I can possibly imagine.

And in this strange, strange universe of physics, there somehow runs a Stream, and there burns a Blazing Star. How blessed we are.

I am an atheist, I do not think there is a loving god, a divine benevolent intelligence.

But if you wanted to call this Blazing Star, this merciful cosmic fact that we live in a universe where any of this is even possible, “God”...

Well, I wouldn’t blame you.

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This is Part 4 of a 5 Part series. You can find Part 5 here.

1. When you embark on the Shamanic Journey, you start by encountering all forms of weird and wondrous Spirits, and the Spirits become more powerful as you progress, until finally, you reach the end of the Journey, and you find the ultimate punchline: There never were any Spirits. It was always just You. What else could it have ever been? You return home.

2. This is my equivalent to the Buddhists’ “Ten Endowments”.

3. I did a lot of experimentation with those archives, such as writing computer programs to replay them in real time so I could re-experience the timing between messages, which affected the feeling a lot!

4. Though you are of course free to use those as Hints!

5. And if you think you can, you are being Deceived.

6. There is a looooot of technical nuance here that is not worth us getting tangled up in right now.