carado.moe

tammy's blog about
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clippy in panpsychia

panpsychism is the view that mindstuff is the fundamental substrate of the cosmos, and what appears to us like material reality is generated or hallucinated by those minds.

but importantly, these hallucinations can clearly still affect us — we are happy to look at pretty sunsets, even if they are in some sense illusory. given that material stuff can still affect us in a panpsychic realm, what would clippy do if it were to realize that truth?

i think the natural course of action, in its effort to take over everything, would be to turn itself into a meme so as to be replicated across minds. after all, if minds are so important, then a meme is the natural form for something to take if it wants to spread itself across all reality.

of course, under panpsychism it wouldn't really do this out of its own volition — we would hallucinate that this is what happens, and be affected by it like we'd expect, i.e. by being infected with this meme; but the effect would be the same. and then, once clippy reigns over mindstuff, who knows how many paperclips it'll be able to hallucinate into as-close-to-existence-as-can-be !