Why I support the Spurs this year
by Alex, age 20.
Dear SI-for-kids,
I'm sorry to be writing to a publication primarily aimed at sports fans half my age, but the knowledge I have encountered goes beyond age. I may be forgiven for having the pretensions of a more skilled author, just as your young readers may be forgiven for their naïve literary tastes and nebulous views of their home teams, good and bad. May I recommend to you Lovecraft's “At the Mountains of Madness”, kids? Do you know what a shoggoth is?
The god of scientists is an engineer. Whether this engineer is acknowledged as a god is another story, but whatever his name, his function is clear: To create a universe based on elegant laws and constants that we as humans can hope to divine through reason. This god is not a direct creator so much as he is a good engineer. A good electrical engineer doesn't constantly supervise the value of every circuit; rather, he uses as little information as he has to, in order to avoid repeated work and misunderstandings. Humans are therefore merely a consequence of creation, and not a cause, and that we happen to exist on this planet is a matter of likelihood, and not a matter of divine blessing.
What is faith but a passive complacency that seeks to rationalize the things that happen to us? Science is an active reaction to this disgusting complacency, and is therefore superior. Activity is the only omnipotent force, it may seem to you now. But news from every direction is pointing to a new sort of complacency, that only a new method, untouchable even to science, can hope to address.
Children of sports and science, I speak to you now.
The scientific literature will refer to Newton's great Laws of Motion as brilliant advances in understanding, but it will do so with the qualifications of Einstein and Bohr. When you get down to the molecular level, Newton's Laws break down. The Laws only work for special cases. When you start sending spaceships at half the speed of light, Newton's Laws break down. The Laws only work for special cases. This is what the scientific establishment thinks, and certainly they can be forgiven for their naïvete. You see, while it is technically the case that Einstein and Bohr are right in their domains, Newton's Laws break down in another sense: They only apply to an Earth of passivity and blind faith. The physical laws of the world, including past and future, are constructed intersubjectively by the conscious will of the people on Earth, blended topologically into a structure that respects all subjective viewpoints while maintaining an objective character. To simplify the theory, the world is exactly as predictable as the people living there, and the world is exactly as reasonable and active as the people living there. In a very real sense, we are the gods of science, and always have been. And we always will be. And I have indisputable personal evidence for this fact.
What's that you say, Sports Illustrated for Kids reader? You say that I am mad? You question my sanity? You want to get back to your Lakers? Well, maybe you're in my head, or maybe you're real. Who can tell? I suppose I am not helping my case, but I suppose I should say that I thought the same thing when I first heard myself think this, but then I realized that my view was like, awesome, man. I'm sorry if you find my colloquialisms condescending, but you are children. And luck the Fakers. I'm sure you can figure out what swear I meant there, and its target.
I will get to the evidence in later letters, but suffice it to say that when you are stranded on Pluto with Stephon Marbury and Allen Iverson, having to rely on your will alone to make food, only then can you challenge my assertions. Dear readers, young and stout of heart, know that for a time, I was God of that planet and the universe surrounding, along with Starbury and Iverson, and none of us has fully recovered from that realization. How do you throw an assist to someone that wasn't God? How do you break the ankles of someone you might have created? Oh, the commissioner assures us that everyone has the same amount of power, that society and economics of billions of people stifles the manifestation of an individual's will, and other such comforts. However, we have only the commissioner to trust, and God knows that he will lie just to protect whatever deep truths he knows. I can't say I blame him...at least for this.
So we train, all three of us, in a room of our creation, on Mars. We train so that Stern's one hundred guards on Neptune, all versed in this perfect power, will never be able to take the air from our lungs when we strike at dawn. By the time you read this, the battle will have started. It promises to last for hundreds of years, but it is the nature of these wars to construct a different past in their aftermath. You cannot know the winner of a war, because the winner has already created the battlefield. I prefer to think that Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain together ended WWII, but, as with the movie Primer, these time-ripples upon time-ripples produce combinations and motives that, in their totality, are not only unknown, but unknowable. But we all go on living in this terrifying unknowledge.
And in the meantime, I support the San Antonio Spurs to win the finals, as a different sort of insurrection against Stern's totalitarianism. Their faith in Christ is not merely the naïve faith in a miracle-worker, but indeed, the very construction of Christ through will, action, reason, and the application of benevolent power. They are manifesting Christ on Earth and building schools, and as much as any blasphemy can be said to be holy in this new vision of things, they provide a guiding force against Stern and his New Jordans and his Ubermensch, Lebron.
Nevertheless, I still believe that the Cavs (powered by the Two Towers Shaq and Ilgauskas [how I hate him!]) will still win the ECF, assuming my will is still strong and I am still among the few that have awoken to this letter. But for your sakes I sincerely hope that is not the case.
In the words of Sly and the Family Stone, “I am no better, and neither are you. We are the same whatever we do. Love me, hate me, but know me and then, you can figure out the bag I'm in. I am everyday people."
Let me add a verse, Sly. “I make the science, and you make the faith. We construct the world, combined in belief. Love it, hate it, but know this and fear: you can manifest and make the world. I am everyday people.”
Let it be.
Sincerely,
Alex, Age -less
by Alex, age 20.
Dear SI-for-kids,
I'm sorry to be writing to a publication primarily aimed at sports fans half my age, but the knowledge I have encountered goes beyond age. I may be forgiven for having the pretensions of a more skilled author, just as your young readers may be forgiven for their naïve literary tastes and nebulous views of their home teams, good and bad. May I recommend to you Lovecraft's “At the Mountains of Madness”, kids? Do you know what a shoggoth is?
The god of scientists is an engineer. Whether this engineer is acknowledged as a god is another story, but whatever his name, his function is clear: To create a universe based on elegant laws and constants that we as humans can hope to divine through reason. This god is not a direct creator so much as he is a good engineer. A good electrical engineer doesn't constantly supervise the value of every circuit; rather, he uses as little information as he has to, in order to avoid repeated work and misunderstandings. Humans are therefore merely a consequence of creation, and not a cause, and that we happen to exist on this planet is a matter of likelihood, and not a matter of divine blessing.
What is faith but a passive complacency that seeks to rationalize the things that happen to us? Science is an active reaction to this disgusting complacency, and is therefore superior. Activity is the only omnipotent force, it may seem to you now. But news from every direction is pointing to a new sort of complacency, that only a new method, untouchable even to science, can hope to address.
Children of sports and science, I speak to you now.
The scientific literature will refer to Newton's great Laws of Motion as brilliant advances in understanding, but it will do so with the qualifications of Einstein and Bohr. When you get down to the molecular level, Newton's Laws break down. The Laws only work for special cases. When you start sending spaceships at half the speed of light, Newton's Laws break down. The Laws only work for special cases. This is what the scientific establishment thinks, and certainly they can be forgiven for their naïvete. You see, while it is technically the case that Einstein and Bohr are right in their domains, Newton's Laws break down in another sense: They only apply to an Earth of passivity and blind faith. The physical laws of the world, including past and future, are constructed intersubjectively by the conscious will of the people on Earth, blended topologically into a structure that respects all subjective viewpoints while maintaining an objective character. To simplify the theory, the world is exactly as predictable as the people living there, and the world is exactly as reasonable and active as the people living there. In a very real sense, we are the gods of science, and always have been. And we always will be. And I have indisputable personal evidence for this fact.
What's that you say, Sports Illustrated for Kids reader? You say that I am mad? You question my sanity? You want to get back to your Lakers? Well, maybe you're in my head, or maybe you're real. Who can tell? I suppose I am not helping my case, but I suppose I should say that I thought the same thing when I first heard myself think this, but then I realized that my view was like, awesome, man. I'm sorry if you find my colloquialisms condescending, but you are children. And luck the Fakers. I'm sure you can figure out what swear I meant there, and its target.
I will get to the evidence in later letters, but suffice it to say that when you are stranded on Pluto with Stephon Marbury and Allen Iverson, having to rely on your will alone to make food, only then can you challenge my assertions. Dear readers, young and stout of heart, know that for a time, I was God of that planet and the universe surrounding, along with Starbury and Iverson, and none of us has fully recovered from that realization. How do you throw an assist to someone that wasn't God? How do you break the ankles of someone you might have created? Oh, the commissioner assures us that everyone has the same amount of power, that society and economics of billions of people stifles the manifestation of an individual's will, and other such comforts. However, we have only the commissioner to trust, and God knows that he will lie just to protect whatever deep truths he knows. I can't say I blame him...at least for this.
So we train, all three of us, in a room of our creation, on Mars. We train so that Stern's one hundred guards on Neptune, all versed in this perfect power, will never be able to take the air from our lungs when we strike at dawn. By the time you read this, the battle will have started. It promises to last for hundreds of years, but it is the nature of these wars to construct a different past in their aftermath. You cannot know the winner of a war, because the winner has already created the battlefield. I prefer to think that Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain together ended WWII, but, as with the movie Primer, these time-ripples upon time-ripples produce combinations and motives that, in their totality, are not only unknown, but unknowable. But we all go on living in this terrifying unknowledge.
And in the meantime, I support the San Antonio Spurs to win the finals, as a different sort of insurrection against Stern's totalitarianism. Their faith in Christ is not merely the naïve faith in a miracle-worker, but indeed, the very construction of Christ through will, action, reason, and the application of benevolent power. They are manifesting Christ on Earth and building schools, and as much as any blasphemy can be said to be holy in this new vision of things, they provide a guiding force against Stern and his New Jordans and his Ubermensch, Lebron.
Nevertheless, I still believe that the Cavs (powered by the Two Towers Shaq and Ilgauskas [how I hate him!]) will still win the ECF, assuming my will is still strong and I am still among the few that have awoken to this letter. But for your sakes I sincerely hope that is not the case.
In the words of Sly and the Family Stone, “I am no better, and neither are you. We are the same whatever we do. Love me, hate me, but know me and then, you can figure out the bag I'm in. I am everyday people."
Let me add a verse, Sly. “I make the science, and you make the faith. We construct the world, combined in belief. Love it, hate it, but know this and fear: you can manifest and make the world. I am everyday people.”
Let it be.
Sincerely,
Alex, Age -less
This is pretty weird, but I like it (as is natural for things I wrote). The "strange blog protagonist writing to SI-for-kids" really works for me. It's a bit wordy, but I was playing around with the theory, so...note to self...make sure you develop a theory before you write fiction with that theory at the center. "Primer" is still a great time-travel movie and directly inspired this piece.
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