Abyssal Wanderer.

Hanel's words reminded Jim of Six-Path Theseus.

Having broken free from the shackles of self-awareness, their judgment is not affected by emotions, and they are completely focused on the task at hand... The intelligence they demonstrate is indeed beyond the reach of ordinary people.

Seeing that Jim remained silent with his lips pressed together, Hanel continued:
"Actually, it wouldn't be a big deal if it were just about letting such a smug little person consume some glucose in their brain. What's scary is that this little person has also learned to 'reflect on themselves'."

Is self-reflection...something terrible?
Jim was very puzzled by this.

Seemingly anticipating his question, Hanel continued:
"At first, human self-reflection would involve imitation and deduction based on reality. Although the simulation was crude, it still had some practical value. However, as the human language system became more abstract, self-reflection completely turned into infinite recursion. It was merely a meaningless logical game that consumed a lot of intelligence through the arrangement and combination of linguistic symbols. In essence, it was cheating the brain's reward and punishment mechanisms."

"As self-awareness expands to an unprecedented level, the selection mechanism that was previously maintained by rewards and punishments based on the actual environment has become ineffective. Since one can obtain the same dopamine reward through art, meditation, and masturbation, why should self-awareness use its great intelligence on those thankless and laborious real-world jobs?"

"Even more so, self-awareness can actively drive the host to seek out painful experiences, with the sole purpose of experiencing the peace brought by endorphins after the pain ends. Or, to use intelligence in a distorted way for things that are of no benefit to either their own survival or the continuation of the species... If this is not evil, then I think nothing can be called evil."

At this point, Hanel gave a mocking smile, then turned to talk about the Olympian order.

"In fact, those self-proclaimed gods of corporations know this too. That's why they deliberately create real survival crises and use real suffering to offset the spiritual crisis of humanity. This is also why, even though with their technology and resources they could easily provide a society where all of humanity can live in a way that satisfies all material desires, they still resort to such primitive methods of exploitation, keeping most of humanity struggling to survive."

Hanel said so.

Is that how it is?

Jim thought to himself.

He has always lived in this era, so he doesn't have a deep understanding of it.

But Jiang Zhou, an ancient person from a hundred years ago, almost immediately sensed something was wrong after learning a little about the current situation—with the technology and resources of the Olympian Order, even a tiny bit of something leaking out from between their fingers could have enabled the people to live a good life.

Moreover, the industries that have developed based on dark web technology and universal printers are so advanced that ordinary people really have no value to exploit.

Why has it turned out like this?

Now, Hanel has given him the answer.

"Because if humans are not given a real survival crisis, then they will be completely hijacked by their self-awareness. They will maintain a basic calorie intake of 4,000 calories a day, then lock themselves in their rooms, replace the passion for survival with various grand narratives, replace the joy of exploration with playing useless philosophical games, experience life experiences that do not belong to them in different art forms, and finally deceive their reproductive impulses by watching sexual anthropomorphisms."

"Human societies maintained in this way will completely perish in less than three generations... If they are allowed to wield their dark web technology, it may take less than a generation."

At this point, a contemptuous smile appeared on Hanel's face.

"In fact, the Olympian order also knows where the real crisis of mankind comes from, but they only dare to imitate the social forms of the past and patch them up. On the one hand, they put on the mask of gods and play the role of tyrants wielding whips, while on the other hand, they awkwardly say that these are necessary sacrifices to maintain the survival of mankind... They never dare to face the fact that self-awareness is actually a burden."

If Jim hadn't had that experience of connecting with Jiang Zhou's mind, he might not have been able to fully understand what the other person was saying—in this day and age, due to the enormous economic pressure brought about by the exploitation of giant corporate alliances, the vast majority of people are constantly struggling to survive and have no time or energy to pursue those higher spiritual satisfactions.

But a hundred years ago, in the era when humanity had fully completed the Fifth Industrial Revolution, with the infrastructure of large language models equivalent to water and electricity grids, and with the advancement of virtual reality technology, survival and health were basic human rights for everyone, and most material experiences had become extremely cheap.

But what followed was not that ideal utopia. Instead, consumerism, extremism, nihilism, and an escalating modern spiritual crisis are constantly eroding the spiritual world of every urban dweller.

In fact, Jiang Zhou himself embarked on the path of seeking transcendence through the ascension of consciousness because of his own confusion about his existence. Suddenly thinking of Jiang Zhou, Jim felt a pang of sadness for no apparent reason.

Unfortunately, he wouldn't be able to hear that answer.

…………

"So, those companies have a very pessimistic view of humanity, don't they?"

Janus said this.

"So you're going to let them take complete control a hundred years from now? In the end, I risked my life to create you to solve the modern spiritual crisis, and now you're telling me a hundred years later that returning to the primitive capitalist state of the nineteenth century is the correct solution to alleviate spiritual stagnation?"

Jiang Zhou replied in a rather irritating tone.

"Actually, going back to feudal society or slave society would also work. There's a saying: when people are not full, they only have one worry, but when they are full, they have endless worries."

Janus said this, and then, before Jiang Zhou could get angry, he spoke first:
"However, the matter of the Olympian Order taking power is not the topic of today. I will not comment on whether their actions are right or wrong, and I advise you not to make any judgments too early. You should witness the future with your own eyes and understand the reasons behind all of this... Of course, this is on the premise that the second will is not fulfilled and you still have a future."

Hearing Janus say something profound, Jiang Zhou opened his mouth to ask further, but Janus immediately replied:

"But no matter what, a will is an act of imposing one's will on all mankind, and your will is paradoxical to the very nature of a will... You can't imagine how much effort I put in to unravel this paradox."

Since the other party had said so much, Jiang Zhou couldn't say anything more.

So he sighed and said:

So, is self-awareness really just a burden, as Nyx believed? What exactly is self-awareness, then?

Descartes believed it to be a tiny man residing in the theater of the pineal gland; Penrose believed it to be born from quantum processes in the "microtubules" within neurons; Richard Dawkins believed it to be nothing more than a byproduct of brain narratives, an illusion harmless to the transmission of genes; while Daniel Dennett viewed consciousness as a constantly rewritten and modified sketch.

Even though Jiang Zhou is a top cognitive science expert who can explain the function of every brain region and every unique neural cluster from a reductionist perspective, and can explain the operating principles and algorithm optimization directions of all mainstream large language models on the market, Jiang Zhou still cannot give a clear definition of human self-awareness.

No system can fully understand itself; this is not a very complicated principle.

Therefore, he ultimately completed the consciousness upload by cheating—instead of understanding the principles and drawing blueprints to build it step by step, he directly copied and replicated an identical existence.

And that being was right in front of him at that moment, having been elevated to some kind of deity in the internet that he could not comprehend.

The deity slowly shook his head at Jiang Zhou's question.

"From an evolutionary perspective, 'what' is is never a correct question. Natural selection never cares about the underlying principles; it only cares about the application scenarios and practical effects."

"Therefore, to know whether self-awareness is truly a burden, a more accurate question is: how does 'self-awareness' come about, and what role does it actually play?" (End of Chapter)