Chris Suellentrop on "The Talos Principle"

The Talos Principle

Croteam

NYT

Chris Suellentrop, a video game critic for The New York Times, describes a video game - The Talos Principle - in his article "Enticing All to See the Bigger Picture" (New York Times, January 27, 2015), from which I offer the following digest version:

Play enough video games and . . . you'll start to wonder what it all means. Is there a point? . . . [The game called] The Talos Principle . . . takes . . . [such] inquiries a step further[,] . . . prompting . . . meditat[ation] on the meaning of life . . . . [It] quotes Milton, Blake, Kant and Chesterton, among others, and expects you to piece together why any of it matters . . . . [It] begins with an amnesiac who awakens in a new world and tries to make sense of it . . . . The game [is one] of puzzles, [such as] . . . uncovering who you are and why a disembodied voice is speaking to you . . . . [Much] is opaque at first, [but] . . . core concerns - the nature of consciousness, the existence of God - are clear . . . . "Behold, child, you are risen from dust," a sonorous voice declaims before telling you he is Elohim, your maker. There are references to a temple, a garden, a covenant, the promise of eternal life . . . . [The Hebrew word] Elohim is the first . . . [reference] to God in the Hebrew Bible, but the mysterious voice of The Talos Principle clearly isn't meant to be That Guy.

No? He certainly sounds a lot like "That Guy." But Suellentrop has played the game and must know what he's talking about. Perhaps the game has a gnostic twist to it? But let's read on:

Uncovering exactly who . . . [this Elohim] is and why he has put you there requires solving a series of puzzles[, i,e.,] . . . hidden Tetris-shaped sigils behind locks and gates of escalating complexity. Beams of light, and later cubes and fans, must be arranged in intricate geometric webs to reach the sigils, . . . then . . . rotated and assembled into rectangles . . . [to] open doors that lead . . . to evermore [difficult] brain teasers . . . . [T]hese challenges are [pleasing], [but] The Talos Principle is as much a game about reading as . . . about puzzling through logic exercises. A series of computer terminals . . . placed throughout Elohim's world . . . . [offer] texts . . . [of] poetry, philosophical digressions or Internet chat logs . . . . [T]hese readings are routinely engaging, clever and thought-provoking[,] . . . [but e]ven more rewarding are . . . encounters with the Milton Library Assistant, the game's rough equivalent to Eden's serpent.

This is where the game begins to sound gnostic. A 'serpent' named after John Milton would surely offer good advice . . . right?

Elohim forbids . . . climbing a tower . . . contain[ing] knowledge of the world beyond. The assistant . . . [says] to ascend anyway. Like Lucifer in "Paradise Lost," the Milton Library Assistant is . . . more fascinating . . . than the remote and inscrutable Elohim[, and a]s the player . . . types on the game's virtual keyboards, . . . [the player's] fingers . . . [appear] robotic, and the assistant begins a series of questionnaires that ask the player to prove . . . [itself] a conscious being. The game partly functions as a reverse Turing test - a computer asking a human to prove its capacity to think, rather than the other way around . . . . [T]his game is deeply interested in the nature of artificial intelligence and the potential of machines to reason.

Suellentrop adds that in Greek mythology, Talos was a giant made of bronze. Maybe this is the game-makers' allusion to a robot brought to life (and consciousness?) by a supply of ichor - the blood of gods and other immortals - flowing through its single vein, but we should perhaps also note that this giant died from loss of ichor when the single vein was opened. Whether this is useful in understanding the game, I don't know - nor do I know what the Talos "principle" refers to.

But I wonder if being "conscious" is identical with being able to "reason." Does a Turing test - original or reversed - conflate these two? And is that important in playing this puzzling game?

Whatever the answers to these questions, The Talos Principle sounds interesting.

'Looking Good' into the Abyss?

Lionel Trilling

Looked too long?

Atlantic Monthly

Although the caricature above comes from Nathan Glick's article, "The Last Great Critic" (Atlantic Monthly, July 2000), I don't think Glick mentions the abyss of today's subject heading, but Lionel Trilling was very familiar with Nietzsche's words on the abyss:

. . . wenn du lange in einen Abgrund blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein

This is usually translated as "when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you," but I would suggest a slight rewording: "if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss gazes back deeply into you." If you dwell long in contemplation on that aphorism, you might come to sense the angst that it's meant to provoke. Unless you're like one of those 'unhungry' students in a class mentioned by Trilling and cited by Mark Edmundson in "Education's Hungry Hearts" (The New York Times Sunday Review, March 31, 2012):

Too many current students conform to the description that Lionel Trilling offered in a famous passage from an essay called "On the Teaching of Modern Literature." Trilling had been teaching his students Kafka and Blake, Nietzsche and Freud. "I asked them to look into the Abyss," Trilling writes, "and, both dutifully and gladly, they have looked into the Abyss, and the Abyss has greeted them with the grave courtesy of all objects of serious study, saying: 'Interesting, am I not? And exciting, if you consider how deep I am and what dread beasts lie at my bottom. Have it well in mind that a knowledge of me contributes to your being whole, or well-rounded men.'"

I love that irony. Nietzsche's aphorism of the abyss is intended perhaps as a secular equivalent for the biblical fear of coming face-to-face with the living God, the abyss as a terrible presence of absence only dimly remembered in Sartre's "encounter with nothingness" and not even vaguely intimated by the well-rounded men who gazed at the words about it in Trilling's class, those 'looking good' into the abyss.

Perhaps I am one of them . . .

Tigers of Paper . . . and of Metaphysique

Kuniyoshi Utagawa, Tiger

Nineteenth-Century Painting

(Image from Wikipedia)

I went hunting for more poems by A.D. Hope and returned from my hunt with a paper tiger . . . followed by a more authentic one in the same poem (and another scary one in a different poem shortly thereafter):

Tiger

At noon the paper tigers roar
- Miroslav Holub

The paper tigers roar at noon;
The sun is hot, the sun is high.
They roar in chorus, not in tune,
Their plaintive, savage hunting cry.

O, when you hear them, stop your ears
And clench your lids and bite your tongue.
The harmless paper tiger bears
Strong fascination for the young.

His forest is the busy street;
His dens the forum and the mart;
He drinks no blood, he tastes no meat:
He riddles and corrupts the heart.

But when the dusk begins to creep
From tree to tree, from door to door,
The jungle tiger wakes from sleep
And utters his authentic roar.

It bursts the night and shakes the stars
Till one breaks blazing from the sky;
Then listen! If to meet it soars
Your heart's reverberating cry,

My child, then put aside your fear:
Unbar the door and walk outside!
The real tiger waits you there;
His golden eyes shall be your guide.

And, should he spare you in his wrath,
The world and all the worlds are yours;
And should he leap the jungle path
And clasp you with his bloody jaws,

Then say, as his divine embrace
Destroys the mortal parts of you:
I too am of that royal race
Who do what we are born to do.

One might think that "stars" does not rhyme with "soars," but in Australian, it does . . . just in case anyone was thinking to object.

According to Wikipedia, "paper tiger" is a literal translation of the Chinese zhǐ lǎohǔ (Chinese: 紙老虎), meaning something that seems as threatening as a tiger but is really harmless, but you knew that. A.D. Hope borrows Miroslav Holub's line "At noon the paper tigers roar," but I don't know from where he lifts it. Undoubtedly not from Holub's immunological works.

Hope's poem should probably be read in conjunction with William Blake's 1794 poem, "The Tyger":

The Tyger

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art.
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

In one of the English lessons that I gave to my daughter, we read this poem by Blake, and she loved it . . . in her innocence. Perhaps she should also read Hope's tiger poem to help her learn the difference between real and paper tigers.

I'm still working on that difference.

Paradise Lost: Sound Advice for First-Time Readers

William Blake, The Temptation of Eve

"but to keep ye low and ignorant"

(Image from darknefs vifible)

A couple of years ago, on December 9 2005, an anonymous student emailing from some University of Massachusetts campus posted this open-ended query to my favorite e-list of scholars, the Milton-List:

"what fate does mankind deserve following the fall?"

That was all, not even a capitalized "W"! The poor student was pretty obviously looking for help with a term paper and probably desperate at the end of a fruitless semester filled with procrastinating activities. Various Milton scholars on the list had little sympathy, and didn't hide their annoyance (so I'll hide their identities):

"I suspect that's something your teacher wants you to determine."

"If you expect to get a useful answer to this question, you're going to have to provide some context."

"At least try to contribute something beyond this, like, say, maybe the entire draft text of the paper you're obviously trying to get us to write for you."

And so the 'answers' went . . . . Well, regular readers know how much sympathy I have for those unfortunate students who have stumbled into less than upright means of fulfilling assignments, so I decided to help with the stumbling:

Pay no attention to those other scholars. They wish to hide knowledge from you, to keep you low and ignorant. Why? Because in the day that you receive an answer, you shall be like them, knowing good texts from bad -- if there be bad.

Here, accept what I offer: After eating the apple, which turned out to be unripe, mankind deserved a bellyache, and that is exactly what mankind received.

All scholars are secretly agreed upon this, but I am revealing it openly for the first time. Share it freely with other students. Put it into your term papers. Quote me on it.

But don't bellyache afterwards.

I was alluding, of course, to Satan's words directed toward Eve Paradise Lost 9.684-732 as he tempted her to receive the apple:

Queen of this Universe, doe not believe
Those rigid threats of Death; ye shall not Die:
How should ye? by the Fruit? it gives you Life
To Knowledge, By the Threatner, look on mee,
Mee who have touch'd and tasted, yet both live,
And life more perfet have attaind then Fate
Meant mee, by ventring higher then my Lot.
Shall that be shut to Man, which to the Beast
Is open? or will God incense his ire
For such a petty Trespass, and not praise
Rather your dauntless vertue, whom the pain
Of Death denounc't, whatever thing Death be,
Deterrd not from atchieving what might leade
To happier life, knowledge of Good and Evil;
Of good, how just? of evil, if what is evil
Be real, why not known, since easier shunnd?
God therefore cannot hurt ye, and be just;
Not just, not God; not feard then, nor obeyd:
Your feare it self of Death removes the feare.
Why then was this forbid? Why but to awe,
Why but to keep ye low and ignorant,
His worshippers; he knows that in the day
Ye Eate thereof, your Eyes that seem so cleere,
Yet are but dim, shall perfetly be then
Op'nd and cleerd, and ye shall be as Gods,
Knowing both Good and Evil as they know.
That ye should be as Gods, since I as Man,
Internal Man, is but proportion meet,
I of brute human, yee of human Gods.
So ye shall die perhaps, by putting off
Human, to put on Gods, death to be wisht,
Though threat'nd, which no worse then this can bring.
And what are Gods that Man may not become
As they, participating God-like food?
The Gods are first, and that advantage use
On our belief, that all from them proceeds;
I question it, for this fair Earth I see,
Warm'd by the Sun, producing every kind,
Them nothing: If they all things, who enclos'd
Knowledge of Good and Evil in this Tree,
That whoso eats thereof, forthwith attains
Wisdom without their leave? and wherein lies
Th' offence, that Man should thus attain to know?
What can your knowledge hurt him, or this Tree
Impart against his will if all be his?
Or is it envie, and can envie dwell
In Heav'nly brests? these, these and many more
Causes import your need of this fair Fruit.
Goddess humane, reach then, and freely taste. (PL 9.684-732)

I don't know if the student caught my allusions or even followed my well-intended advice, but my "bellyache thesis" actually has much to commend it . . . even if no other scholars seem to have recognized the chasmic depths of its engulfing profundity.

Now, however, those procrastinating students looking for help in writing their last-minute papers have a legitimate resource, a new, user-friendly website designed by students for first-time readers of Milton's Paradise Lost:

darknefs vifible

I think that they mean "Darkness Visible," but whom am I to take issue with nostalgia for the lisping orthographic conventions of Early Modern English?

Humor aside, I like the website and recommend a visit -- and not only for first-time Milton readers.

Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom in Paradise Lost

William Blake, Original Plate for The Tyger

Illustrating Blake's Query About Evil and the Creator

(Image from Wikipedia)

An analogy whose details I do not recall has recently been made on the Milton List to illustrate divine foreknowledge and human freedom. In this sort of analogy, a person from an elevated position, say a hill, sees that two free agents driving automobiles, for example, are traveling from opposite directions around a blind curve and are certain to collide.

Such a person foresees but bears no responsibility for the collision.

I think that Diane McColley was referring to an analogy of this sort in a recent post on the Milton List:

"Some will say ... [that Milton's Adam and Eve] had to fail ... [God's test] because God foresaw that they would, but divine foresight is not cause, as William Kolbrener has just explained."

I don't actually recall Professor Kolbrener's explanation, but let's assume this sort of analogy anyway.

If we also assume that divine foreknowledge of free acts is possible (e.g., through some sort of Molinist supercomprehension), then let's imagine two possible cases:

1. An omniscient but powerless non-creator foreknows the free acts of creatures that will choose evil over good with the consequence that the cosmos will become permeated with evil.

2. An omniscient and all-powerful creator creates the cosmos and foreknows the free acts of creatures that will choose evil over good with the consequence that the cosmos will become permeated with evil.

In the first case, the analogy to the person on the hill works.

Just as a person from an elevated position can see that two free agents driving automobiles and traveling from opposite directions around a blind curve are certain to collide, so an omniscient but powerless non-creator can foreknow the free acts of creatures that will choose evil over good with the consequence that the cosmos will become permeated with evil.

In the second case, I'm uncertain whether or not the analogy works.

Even if we assume -- as we have assumed -- that the omniscient and all-powerful creator's foreknowledge is not causation, this creator's role as omniscient, all-powerful creator raises the issue of his (or her) responsibility for creating a cosmos despite foreknowing that it will become permeated by evil.

Such a creator had best have a pretty good reason for creating the cosmos.

Milton embeds a free-will defense within his larger theodicy and seems to assume that this resolves the issue of God's responsibility, but that doesn't seem quite sufficient to allow God "to wash his hands" of the consequences (as someone on the Milton List has noted).

A further step is needed, namely, an argument that the cosmos is worth creating despite the evil that will come to permeate it -- for example, that the amount of evil does not cross the equivalent of a "Van Inwagen line," a threshold whose crossing would result in an amount of evil sufficient to disqualify the cosmos from being created.

For Milton's theodicy to work, it has to show that God has a pretty good reason for creating the cosmos despite the evil that will result. (For that matter, he would also need to have a pretty good reason for creating Satan and his cohorts.)

Does Milton's God offer such a reason anywhere in Paradise Lost? Does Milton offer one anywhere in his extensive writings?