It's funny that Worm is so beloved in rationalist circles because it explicitly rejects the utilitarianism of its characters. There's a reason why Taylor is compared to Walter White. The Zizians in particular misunderstood the dangers of AI just like Saint did; why do you think Dragon is written as the Cortana to Colin's Master Chief?
Either people need to learn how to tell the difference between an “I’m sorry” that takes direct responsibility and an “I’m sorry” that signifies sympathy, or I’m gonna start responding to unfortunate information with a solemn nod and a “Sympies,” because I am tired of receiving a “Why? It wasn’t your fault” every time I try to vocalize compassion.
And God said, "Behold! I have created the fourth primordial force: the weak interaction!"
And the angels all clapped and nodded politely, and there was a long silence; and finally Verchiel, the Angel of Grace, spoke up and asked, "Er, what exactly does it do, O Fashioner?"
And God said, "What do you mean, 'what does it do?' It's the fourth fundamental force of the universe."
And Verchiel said, "You mentioned that. Um. But it's just that the other three sort of have a brand, you know? Gravity helps build large-scale structures, acts over vast cosmic distances, shapes time and space. The strong force is secret, hidden, binding together quarks and all that. Electromagnetism, very cool stuff, somewhere in between. We're all big fans of the whole magnetic monopole double bluff, very clever. But, er. What does this 'weak interaction' do?"
And God said, "It mediates radioactive decay. Sort of."
And Verchiel said, "Radioactive decay? All radioactive decay?"
And God said, "No. Just some kinds."
And Zephaniel, the Chief of the Ishim spoke, and he said, "A whole independent force just to mediate some kinds of radioactive decay?"
And God said, "Well. Not totally independent. Technically it's related to electromagnetism."
And Zephaniel said, "Wait, it's not even a real force?"
And God said, "It's totally a real force. It's just that it's one aspect of a combined electromagnetic and weak force. An electro-weak force, if you will."
And Metatron, the Celestial Scribe, scratched his head at this, but said nothing.
And Cambiel, the Angel of Transformation, said, "Maybe you can walk us through it from the top."
And God Sighed an immense Sigh, and said, "All right, fine.
"So the way it works is that all of space and time is permeated by a field that has imaginary mass."
And Cambiel said, "Imaginary mass, O Generous Provider?"
And God said, "Yes, imaginary mass. It's tachyonic, d'you see?"
And Sarathiel, the Angel of Discipline, said, "Wait a minute, I thought we agreed nothing was going to travel faster than light? All that 'c' business and the whole Lorentz transformation thing. What's happening with that?"
And God said, "Let me finish. The field is tachyonic. The particles in the field all move slower than light."
And Sarathiel had to think about this for a second.
And God said, "The point is, a field with imaginary mass has a non-zero vacuum expectation value."
And this really gave Sarathiel trouble, since he had never been very good at math.
And God, seeing this, went back to explain. "Most fields, like the electromagnetic field, have no effect when they are at their lowest energy state. It's like they're not there at all. If you give a field imaginary mass, then it vanishes only when it's at a very high energy state, and at a low energy state, it has a nonzero value everywhere."
And Sarathiel nodded, but he was confused, because he didn't understand why God would create such a thing.
But Verchiel thought he saw where God was going with this, and he was amazed.
"Truly, you are cunning beyond measure, O Only One Certainly Sound and Genuine in Truth! Only now do I understand your design! For in order to make the universe homogenous and isotropic, it is necessary that all large-scale fluctuations in temperature and mass must be evened out early in the history of the cosmos; and therefore, you have designed a field which will rapidly expand space after the Big Bang, many orders of magnitude in brief moments, and then swiftly and spontaneously decay as it gives up the energy it began with, giving rise to radiation and particles of all kinds as it does, which will condense into the material universe! It is a wonder to behold."
And God said, "What? No. I mean I did, but this isn't the inflaton field I'm talking about. This is something else."
And Verchiel said, "Wait, it's not?"
And God said, "No, I'm going to use a different field to drive cosmic inflation. The properties of this field are totally different."
And now Verchiel was also confused, and lapsed into silence.
And God said, "Like I was saying, this field is a scalar field with imaginary mass, and it does spontaneously decay to a ground state with a non-zero value. But it's not the inflaton field. Instead it combines with the W1, W2, W3, and B bosons."
And Metatron began to flip back through the pages of the Heavenly Record trying to figure out where he'd lost the thread.
And Zephaniel said, "The what bosons?"
And God said, "The W1, W2, W3, and B bosons. I'm sure I mentioned them. You know, the massless bosons?"
And Zephaniel said, "I'm pretty sure we only talked about the W+, W-, and Z0 bosons. All of which you said were going to have mass, O Owner of All Sovereignty."
And God said, "Yes, but this is how they get them, you see. Once this field acquires a nonzero value everywhere, the massless bosons interact with it and get mass. Well, some of them do. They turn into the W+, W-, and Z0 boson. And the photon."
And Zephaniel said, "…and the photon, O Accepter of Invocation?"
And God said, "Well, I did say I was going to unify the electromagnetic force and the weak interaction, didn't I? This is how. Above the critical temperature--right now I'm thinking 10^15 K, but I'm open to feedback on that one--electromagnetism and the weak force act as a single unifying force. Below that temperature, the field gets a nonzero value, you get three massive bosons to mediate the weak interaction, and the photon pops out seperately."
And Zephaniel said, "That seems… a bit overly complicated, doesn't it, O Reinstater Who Brings Back All?"
And God said, "No, it's exactly what we need. Look, that way the W and Z bosons have something to do, but the weak interaction still only travels short distances. Gravity is still the star of the show on cosmic scales, as it were. But now quarks and leptons can swap their flavor!"
And Zephaniel said, rather weakly, "Their… flavor, O Source of Good?"
And God said, "It's this new quantum number I'm trying out, to give the three generations of matter more unique identities."
And Cambiel said, "Three generations of matter? Now I'm really confused."
And God said, "I'm sure I mentioned this. You've got the lightest quarks and leptons, and then two heavier versions of each that can decay into the lighter versions."
And Cambiel said, "What do they do? New kinds of chemistry, is it?"
And God said, "Well, no. Mostly they just decay in a couple microseconds. Or even faster."
And Zephaniel began to rub his temples, and Cambiel sniffed.
And Cambiel said, "This all seems a bit ad hoc to me. Not really the stuff of an elegant and obviously ordered Creation. Why not have four generations of matter? Why not a trillion?"
And God began to grow irritable, and said, "Well, that's not really up to you, now is it? We're going to have three generations of matter, and the electroweak force, and that's that!"
And Zephaniel said, "As long as we are unifying fundamental forces, perhaps we could somehow also unify the electroweak interaction with the strong interaction, or even gravity."
And God hesitated saying, "Well, I haven't decided about that yet. I'm not sure I want gravity to be quantized, you know? Seems to take some of the geometric elegance out of general relativity."
And now it was Zephaniel's turn to sigh, and he bowed his head. "As you wish, O Possessor of Authority of Decisions and Judgement."
Uriel, the Angel of Judgement, looked at the blueprints for the cosmos again, and squinted. And he said, "Why are we doing this inflation business again?"
And Verchiel, the Angel of Grace, said, "Because the Eternal Spirit, Worshipped by All, With Absolute Power over All Matters, Natures, and Events wants the cosmos to be flat."
And Uriel said, "Flat? It's got three dimensions--no, four. I hate to say it, but I think the Ever-Adept has goofed on this one."
And Verchiel said, "No, not flat flat, flat in a geometric sense. Parallel lines and all that. Triangles whose corners add up to 180 degrees. Wossname. Euclidean."
And Uriel said, "We really have to stop naming things after mortals that won't be born for billions of years. It gets confusing."
And Verchiel said, "The point is, the universe has got to be flat. If it's too dense, triangles will be able to have more than 180 degrees in their angles, and spacetime'll be curved up like a four-dimensional sphere, and it'll collapse back in on itself. If it's not dense enough, it'll be curved out the other way, triangles will go all pointy, and spacetime'll be infinite and the expansion will accelerate. He Who Is Able To Do Everything would like it to be flat so that the expansion of the universe settles down to a constant rate."
And Uriel said, "I see. Well, that's easy. We just need to get rid of all this clutter. This energy and mass and other nonsense, that's what's causing all this spacetime curvature."
And Verchiel shook his head, and said, "No, no, that stuff's the whole point of Creation in the first place. It just needs to be spread out evenly enough and it all needs to balance out, so that on the whole, the universe is mostly flat."
And Uriel huffed, and said, "Well, it sounds like The Giver of Life doesn't know exactly what he wants in the first place. If matter and energy are going to curve spacetime, including matter and energy is going to make spacetime all lumpy, and it's going to be very tricky to make it all flat."
And Verchiel nodded, and said, "That's what inflation is for. Look here. We start out with a hot, dense universe, right? Matter and energy and stuff. And an inflaton field with lots of energy. Big vacuum energy, makes space expand by about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times in 10^-32 seconds. Cools it off a bit, too. Temperature goes down by about 100,000 times. Smooths out all the lumps from initial quantum fluctuations and all that. Flat spacetime. Neat, hey?"
And Uriel frowned, and said, "I thought you said this universe was supposed to have stuff in it."
Verchiel nodded. "It is," he said. "That's why it starts out all hot and dense and whatnot."
And Uriel said, "Well. It won't be after all that. Your spacetime will be flat, because it will be empty."
And Verchiel said, "Ah, but that's the beauty. Inflation stops, and when it does, the inflaton field loses all that energy. It turns into stuff again. Nice, hot, thick stuff!"
And Uriel examined the plans closely, and tapped his chin with a pencil. "So you're saying the universe is going to start out hot and dense. Then you're going to make it almost completely empty. Then make it hot and dense again. Just to make it flat?"
And Verchiel said, "Well, flat and all the same temperature."
And Uriel, exasperated, said, "Well, why can't it all just start at the same temperature?"
And Verchiel said, "Well, to be honest, we haven't worked that far back yet. We're still working out the details of the first 10^-43 seconds or so. But this way we can also hide all the magnetic monopoles and cosmic strings and things."
And Uriel said, "Are you telling me you designed this god-awful kluge and you haven't even worked out how the universe starts yet?"
And Verchiel got a bit defensive, and said, "Look, you try designing a universe with sentient apes in it! God's got this whole Plan, you see? The Great Saga of Creation, all mapped out. There's going to be ups and downs and Morality and Suffering and Redemption, and kings and tyrants and evolution and, er, economics and things…"
And Uriel said, "Economics?"
And Verchiel said, "And other things! Important things!"
And Uriel said, "If you say so."
And Verchiel said, "Anyway, it's our job to help The Guide to the Right Path realize His vision. And He has decreed it must be flat."
And Uriel said, "Right. Flat. Somehow. Not too flat. There's got to be lumps. That's very important for some reason."
And Verchiel said, "They are interesting lumps."
And Uriel said, "Interesting lumps. If you say so. And this was the best you could come up with?"
And Verchiel said, "It works, doesn't it?"
And Uriel said, "No, it doesn't work. See this number you've added here? This little cosmological constant? Expansion is going to start accelerating again after a few billion years. Your universe isn't so flat after all."
And Verchiel said, "Oh, don't worry about that. That's just a placeholder for dark energy."
And Uriel set down his pencil on his heavenly drafting table, and took off his glasses, and neatly folded them up and set them down, too. Then he looked at Verchiel very seriously and said, "What, in the name of The Timeless, The Patient, the Ever-Returning, the Illustrious, and the Most Supreme, is dark energy?"
It’s so fucked up that experiences from previous relationships can forever impact your ability to form and maintain new relationships. They should patch that out
My resolution last year was to do one thing before bed that would make my morning feel easier, and that’s become a daily habit that I’m carrying into this new year.
Some nights even filling up the kettle and setting an empty mug out for my morning tea felt hard. But I was always thankful for it in the morning.
Other nights, one thing would lead to another, and I’d wake up in a clean house with everything ready to go.
And, on a rare few nights, the one thing that I could do to make my morning easier was going straight to bed and allowing myself to rest.
What stayed the same each day is that I would take a moment to think of what I could do for my future self and do it, even after a hard day. And I would wake up knowing that I had done my best and any effort—no matter how small—was a kindness to myself.
