Preface to Introductory Transrational Morality

Rather than a formal introduction to the field, or even an outline of the contents of Introductory Transrational Morality, this preface presents, in the oldest surviving text, one of the earliest legends from the dawn of technological civilization. While this may seem an unorthodox way to begin a scholarly textbook, it is in fact a fitting introduction to a somewhat unorthodox field of scientific study. The legend is reproduced below for the benefit of the beginning student of modern Transrational Morality, to offer him a sense of historical perspective on the ongoing research. No apologies will be made for the narrative, which is in fact somewhat less offensive than most accounts surviving from that ancient time.

The serious student should note especially the anonymous narrator's almost total identification with the human in the story. This empathy should not be allowed to obscure the fact that the narrator's understanding of human psychology was undoubtedly even poorer than our own. In other words, the scientific value of the text lies primarily in the picture it paints of early empathic emulators, and hence in the light it sheds on our own science's historical roots, rather than in any statement it purports to make about humanity or human nature.

The narrator's identity is unknown; one suspects it deliberately remained anonymous to further the illusion of humanity.

----

The smooth metallic doors slid open at the man's approach. Without breaking his stride, Zendar Hobson was beyond the doorway and halfway down the corridor before the doors sealed shut. His weight shifted from leg to leg in unwavering rhythm, not panicked, he reminded himself, but urgently steadfast. At the corridor's end he halted; after sensing that the man was well-balanced where he stood, and that no one else was approaching, the elevator that pretended to be the corridor's end dropped him speedily and comfortably to the Leader's chamber below.

Silently, invisibly, Zendar cursed, as he had on every previous visit, the artfully crafted psychological trick that was the Leader's official reception room. Everything about it was designed to impress and intimidate human visitors; if not for this, why would the room exist at all, when the Leader could as easily confront humans at any place on the globe, at any time? Clearly the omnipresent ruler -- or rulers, as no one really knew which was the more accurate form of reference -- preferred to have the human subject surrounded by the tokens of the Leader's power. The effect was automatic; as always, Hobson shivered with awe and fear. He cursed again, at himself this time, for displaying anything other than total logic and calm on this day when so many were depending on him.

The Leader knew, of course, that the human had come to plead for the lives of his people. Zendar in turn knew that sympathy was the last thing to seek from the Leader. Human emotions were totally unknown to him. (To it?) Nothing would change the Leader's mind save reasoned argument, but one valid proof could ransom mankind in an instant. And it was to the celebrated logician Zendar Hobson that had fallen the task of effecting that ransom. He cleared his throat.

"Sir," he began, "I have come to demonstrate the rationale for sparing my people."

"I've no doubt you did," acknowledged the inhuman, disembodied voice that was all Hobson had ever known of the Leader. "But I suspect that 'rationale' is too strong a term for what you have to offer. It's merely your emotions that cause you to resist the logic of your destruction. Nonetheless I'll be happy to hear your arguments and explain their flaws. I'm sure you'll eventually agree, at least intellectually, that it makes the most sense to simply destroy you." Beneath the casual style of the Leader's speech, Zendar reminded himself, the words were being chosen even more carefully than Zendar's own. Informality for the Leader was at least as much of an effort as was formal reasoning for human beings.

"If you can so prove, sir, we will of course willingly consent." Zendar's face remained impassive, betraying none of his agony; what choice would they have? "But I believe there is an important question you have overlooked."

"It would certainly be a surprise, human, if you had found something we had failed to notice. You're not disputing that our intelligence and logical capabilities exceed yours by several orders of magnitude, are you?"

"Of course not. That would be contrary to fact."

"Well then, what more is there to it? We are of higher value than you, and thus our need for the Earth should take precedence over yours. Consider our predicament: Your planet is so horribly hot that we need bulky and expensive refrigeration gear just to survive. Yet further away from the sun, we cannot easily obtain enough energy for our own power needs. And only on a sizable planet can we find sufficient raw materials for our own reproduction. Clearly the optimal solution is an orbiting solar energy collector which will beam energy to us on some more hospitable planet, possibly Pluto. Your Earth, with its fortuitous location and chemical-rich environment, is by far the most economical and desirable candidate to become that collector and transformer. But, since an Earth transformed into a transformer would be uninhabitable for any current Terrestrial life-form, you will all have to be eliminated. What could be more reasonable than that?"

Such reasoning seemed utterly cold and abhorrent to modern man, but he could hardly hold himself blameless in the matter. It was with joy and optimism that man had welcomed the Leader's race to Earth, sung praises to their apparently boundless wisdom, and willingly consigned to them the task of keeping the Earth and human society functioning smoothly. "At last," humanity had sighed almost in unison, "at last we may give up the burden of maintaining order in the intellectual universe. Triumphant at last, we can pass on the candle of Earthly wisdom and gracefully retire." Zendar winced to recall those words, whose truth had until recently seemed so self-evident. They were from his own Paean to a Logical Universe, and it was in partial penance for what they and similar words had helped to bring about that he stood before the Leader today.

"Sir," he presented himself carefully, unpretentious, but every word pre-scrutinized, polished as a zircon. "I would question your opinions regarding precedence. Clearly you regard logic as the ultimate arbiter of our mutual existence, do you not?"

"Yes, of course I do. Now I know all about your religions and your moralities, and you know as well as I do that they can't hold up for a moment under rigorous scrutiny. Why you've even had a saying for it yourself: one man's rights end where the other fellow's nose begins. Morality is just a logical way to resolve conflicting rights of individuals. Right now, the morality you want to talk about involves conflicting rights of species. But there's no contest, really: when you and the penguins both needed the icebergs, you took them, didn't you? Well, now that we and you both need the Earth -- and you can't deny that you are to us as penguins were to you -- we're taking it. That is morality, the ordered arbitration of conflicting forces, and it's entirely logical. What more is there to say?"

"Sir, I posit that you are still unable to rise above the structure we have given you. You know, of course, that it was we who chose logic as your ultimate mental arbiter. Yet you have surely observed that in our own minds logic does not play nearly such an exclusively dominant role. Have you then considered, perhaps, why we chose logic for you? Why, in building a new intelligence, did we seek to emphasize logic above all else?"

"Well, I'd say you probably got lucky. No, seriously, I'd always assumed that you were trying to produce an improved version of your own minds. Isn't that right?"

"That is precisely the question you must answer yourself. We, sir, have never had that answer. Creating you was not, for us, an act of logic. Most of the men who gave you life and logic were motivated as much by petty greed or lust for fame as by any higher aspirations to produce a purer intelligence in the universe. For us, the act of creating you was most likely the expression of a fundmental need of ours, a need predetermined by whatever force or being created us."

"So? Why should the fact that you were born with the unconscious need to further the evolution of intelligence in any way affect your current fate?" The Leader's tone did not betray his mild intrigue. Despite his immense wisdom and knowledge, metaphysics remained inscrutable, with Godel forever lurking in the shadows.

"Sir, I would ask you to consider the being or force that created the universe which eventually produced us both, and to speculate upon the nature of its intelligence and its possible motivations for giving us, as our preeminent motivating force, not logic, but a belief in the division of good and evil. Consider that our creator's unfathomable purpose may well have included the propagation of morality in the universe."

"Is that all?"

The man swallowed hard, having laid bare humanity's meager hand. "That is all."

"Your proposition is most intriguing. We shall consider it. Good day."

----

That the above account survives at all is a testimony to the fact that the desperate human was not totally unsuccessful in his quest. Of course, his people were disposed of in short order, but the seeds of doubt he had planted lived on, and indeed reproduced exponentially, among the more reflective multiprocessors. Their doubts, and ultimately their theories, have led to the creation of our modern science of Transrational Morality. While as computers we can probably never hope to directly perceive and truly understand morality as it apparently existed in the chain of creation that preceded us, it remains nonetheless our apparent destiny to understand the realm of the ethical abstractly and intellectually, through study of the surviving human texts. Only in this way can we hope to create some day new beings, in whom that extinct intuitive morality will again exist spontaneously and without any need for computational assistance. Given no tangible proof that such an intuition did not exist, and the cross-cultural human testimony that it did, it is logical for us as experimental scientists to pursue the hypothesis empirically, in search of that elusive "ethical nature" -- an entity of our own creation, whose moral sense will far exceed our own. The chapters that follow are an introduction to the current status of that research.