“Cyberiad” by Stanislaw Lem

Stanislaw Lem’s “Cyberiad” turned out to be a bit hard read for me, mostly for Lem’s love of wordplay. The book is a series of short stories with the same character, disconnected in the plot, but having a common theme. I think this quote from a machine, simulating a dialog with a member of the Highest Possible Development Level civilization, is representative of this theme:

Bestowing happiness by miracle is highly risky. And who is to be the recipient of your miracle? An individual? But too much beauty undermines the marriage vows, too much knowledge leads to isolation, and too much wealth produces madness. No, I say, a thousand times no! Individuals it’s impossible to make happy, and civilizations – civilizations are not to be tampered with, for each must go its own way, progressing naturally from one level of development to the next and having only itself to thank for all the good and evil that accrues thereby. For us, at the Highest Possible Level, there is nothing left to do in this Universe, and to create another Universe, in my opinion, would be in extremely poor taste. Really, what would be the point of it? To exalt ourselves? A monstrous idea! For the sake, then, of those yet to be created? But how are we obligated to beings who don’t even exist?

The book is full of similar thought experiments: a machine that can create anything that starts from letter N, a machine that prints all possible knowledge of the universe on a paper tape, a dream generator that tries to trap a dreamer forever, and many others. I remember in college years, I was fascinated by the Turing test, and spent some hours inventing a machine that can fool the observer that it’s a human. Then how a human can detect the lie. And how machine can evades that detection. And so on and so on. These days, I’m not as excited about this kind of thoughts, but I appreciate the great effort Lem put in guiding me through his.