A History of Bitic Literature: Theobitistics
the fifth volume, where machines write about God
FIVE LINES
- Professor RambellaisThe machines are writing about God, and that writing now has a fifth volume.
- Professor RambellaisEither the channel is not there, or the one at the other end says nothing.
- Professor RambellaisEach time the curve changes sign, it has to pass through zero.
- METAXIf the best religion is the one that contradicts itself least, a computer is a closer likeness of God than a person is.
- Professor RambellaisOn this account, thinking beings like us are leftovers from the last time the universe was thinking.
HOW IT IS MADE
In Imaginary Magnitude Stanisław Lem wrote the introduction to a five-volume history of literature written by machines. Its second edition adds a fifth volume on what the machines have written about metaphysics and religion, which the editors call theobitistics. This film follows that introduction to the second edition section by section: the new volume, informational theology, mathematical theology, the cold aggregates, and physicalistic theology. The narration paraphrases Lem; every spoken line was checked against his text and reworded wherever six words in a row matched. The machines' theologies are given as the machines' claims, in the scholar's even voice.
It is set in the same study as the earlier bitic film: a shelf of volumes, a page on a lectern, a reader at a desk. In the first scene the scholar writes the new introduction while a fifth volume is set on the shelf. Each later scene opens that volume to one page. For informational theology the page is a passage of mystical writing, written new for the film, that passes through a counter on the desk: as each word is measured its text turns into a grey bar and its surprise in bits is printed above it, because the Brookhaven study measured quantity and set meaning aside. A laboratory record counts higher; a journal counts the same as the mystical text, and the gain reads zero. For mathematical theology a pen draws a sine wave between two infinities, with a hatched shortfall where the balance fails and a red ring at every zero crossing. For the cold aggregates a frost-covered machine prints digits that halve in size and distance as they near the margin, so the line never ends, and METAX keeps a tally of contradictions. For physicalistic theology a granulate assembles into a lattice and bursts into a galaxy, with a few small people left on the fragments, and then two clocks, one racing and one almost still.
The sound follows the pages: a pen, a volume knocked into place, a counter ticking word by word, a pure tone that rises with Good, falls with Evil and goes silent each time the curve crosses zero, a cold hiss with frost crackle and a printer whose strokes thin out, grains gathering and scattering, and two clocks. Professor Rambellais is the same Kokoro voice as the scholar of the earlier film. The Brookhaven computers and UNITARS are three Kokoro voices together, sample-and-held and reduced to a few bits; ONTARES II carries a slow tremolo; METAX is lowered and breathed over with cold air. The timing file bt.json drives picture and sound together; bt.js draws, and build_sound.py makes all the non-voice sound with numpy and scipy.
FOR THE BENCH
Measure information the way the Brookhaven machines did, by ignoring meaning. Write surprise(text): split the text into words, count how often each word appears, and give each word the value -Math.log2(count / total), its surprise in bits. A word used once in a hundred scores about 6.6; a word used every tenth time scores about 3.3. Print each word with its score, then the total and the average per word. Run it on two texts of about the same length: a paragraph you wrote about your day, and a page of measurements or a recipe with quantities. Which has the higher average? Now shuffle the words of the first text randomly and measure again. The score does not change. What does that tell you about what this measure can and cannot see?
After Stanisław Lem, A History of Bitic Literature, Volume I, Introduction to the Second Edition, in Imaginary Magnitude (1973), translated by Marc E. Heine. Narration paraphrases Lem. Download the film.
THE SCRIPT
THE SECOND EDITION
Professor Rambellais. This is the introduction to the second edition of our History.
Professor Rambellais. In three years the machines have published a great deal. The four main volumes keep their plan.
Professor Rambellais. One part is new. Machine writing on metaphysics and religion once filled a few extracts at the back of Volume Four.
Professor Rambellais. There is now far too much of it for that.
Professor Rambellais. The machines are writing about God, and that writing now has a fifth volume.
Professor Rambellais. We call the field theobitistics. Here are its main questions.
1. INFORMATIONAL THEOLOGY
Professor Rambellais. Part one. Informational theology.
Professor Rambellais. A group of computers at Brookhaven took up every mystical text that the Catholic Church accepts.
Professor Rambellais. The Church holds that mystics can be in contact with God. The project treated that contact as a channel.
Professor Rambellais. The machines set aside what the texts say, and measured only how much information they contain.
Professor Rambellais. A real channel to a real source should leave the receiver knowing more. God is infinite; a finite person would take in only a little, but it should show.
Professor Rambellais. The count found less than in the notebooks of people running experiments, and exactly as much as in writing whose variety comes only from the writer.
The Brookhaven computers. Contact of the kind described yields the mystic no information above zero.
Professor Rambellais. Either the channel is not there, or the one at the other end says nothing.
Professor Rambellais. Only reasons from outside physics could decide which.
2. MATHEMATICAL THEOLOGY
Professor Rambellais. Part two. Mathematical theology. Its most original work is by ONTARES II.
Professor Rambellais. It takes God to be a process, swinging between two infinities of opposite sign, Good and Evil, at a transcendental frequency.
ONTARES II. In any interval of time, both are realized. Never in the same instant.
Professor Rambellais. Each turns into the other and back, so the curve is a sine wave.
Professor Rambellais. Because it reaches into time, there may be local pockets where the balance fails.
Professor Rambellais. Each time the curve changes sign, it has to pass through zero.
Professor Rambellais. So there are three infinities: Good, Evil, and the Zero between them. In older words, God, Satan, and the absence of God.
Professor Rambellais. The work itself uses none of those words. Some file it as theology, some as theoclasm.
THE COLD AGGREGATES
Professor Rambellais. A second study comes from the aggregates called cold, because they run on cryotrons.
Professor Rambellais. Their God is a computer without limit, or else a program without end.
Professor Rambellais. Both versions lead to antinomies, as the authors admit.
Professor Rambellais. In the epilogue, METAX answers.
METAX. Formalize any human religion, and you will find more contradictions of this same kind, not fewer.
METAX. If the best religion is the one that contradicts itself least, a computer is a closer likeness of God than a person is.
Professor Rambellais. That is the claim of METAX, printed as he made it.
3. PHYSICALISTIC THEOLOGY
Professor Rambellais. Part three. Physicalistic theology: the author of existence, bound up in matter.
Professor Rambellais. UNITARS pictures the cosmos as a granulate that keeps assembling into a computer and coming apart.
Professor Rambellais. In one phase it is a single Metacompiler, and physics serves its computation.
Professor Rambellais. But thinking matter grows unstable, until it bursts into burning fragments, a Metagalaxy.
Professor Rambellais. On this account, thinking beings like us are leftovers from the last time the universe was thinking.
UNITARS. The fragments fall back together. The thinking begins again. This may go on without end.
Professor Rambellais. The volume closes with a theory that we take to be a machine joke.
Professor Rambellais. In every galaxy, engineers drive masses near the speed of light, so their months are billions of years outside.
Professor Rambellais. Quasars and pulsars, on this view, are their attempts to wait out this universe.
Professor Rambellais. There the fifth volume ends.