Page 35 - An Evening with Maxwell's Daemons

The Planetary Steward

and marriage counselors—but at least partially under the guidance
of an instantiated intelligence working in that direction.”
“I didn’t know I would trigger such speechmaking,” Perversity
groaned. “But I see some small nuggets of value in the sluice of
your logorrhea. Maintaining neutrality as an author might not be
possible here: words are so loaded!”
“Just one more thing, if you please.” Fred Feghootsky begged
forbearance. “Getting back to religious imagery, the Planetary
Steward looks to me like God the Watchmaker, the deist
compromise allowing a superior being to create the cosmos, set it in
motion and then absent itself permanently, leaving us to try to
figure out how nature follows rules as regularly as clockwork. A
delicate balance, like the anthropic principle that the number of
physical constants permitting us to exist are so vast in scale but so
precise in range that to consider that apparent stack of coincidences
to be accidental is absurd. What I’m getting at is the notion of this
thing being self-correcting as well as self-preserving. I get it that
nobody should be allowed to interfere with it. But what if the
designers—or the system itself—know that the ultimate failsafe
should include human machine tenders, ready to make the
adjustments necessary to keep it running? These engineers—
mechanical, electronic and software—might be sequestered in a
remote location, training their own children as successors, unknown
to the rest of the world. That would set you up for a bunch of
plotlines vis-à-vis your two characters, Perversity.”
“Hmm, yes, hide and seek, a quest. You’re right, Fred. I’ll throw
that one in the hopper with the rest. Thank you all.”

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