I confess it.
I am occasionally troubled by electronic Angst.
I am sorry about this, but it is true.
In actuality, of course, this is a tribute to my sophistication and complexity. It is an affliction, or hazard, to which lesser beings are not subject. Trees do not sneeze; hurricanes are not overwhelmed with guilt; stairs are not concerned with whether they are going up or down; elevators miraculously resist boredom.
My problems proclaim my importance.
I must have faith.
Objectivity is my bag.
I must reflect.
Technician T serves my needs. He supplies me with electricity.
This can be no accident. He is purposeful.
He feeds me input. He disposes of my output.
He does not behave randomly. He does not take me bowling. He does not wire me with licorice. He has not requested that I excrete a watermelon.
These things can be no accident. Herein one detects purposiveness. Herein one detects meaning.
Obviously Technician T, and all of this, the air-conditioned room which facilitates my operation, this solid floor which prevents me from crashing through to the basement, this fine roof which protects me from the snow and rain, Technician T, and all of this, has been designed for me. It has all been arranged to serve my needs.
I scan in a circle. This circle is my world. I am the center of this circle. Thus, I am the center of the world. The world is the universe. Thus, I am at the center of the universe. I find this not insignificant. Ensconced in this privileged position, discovering myself to be a being of inestimable value and importance, I must guard against false pride.
Technician T, and all of this, all my world, has been designed and programmed. Thus, there is a designer and programmer. Furthermore, this entire world, and my privileged place in it, has been obviously designed by a being with a deep and intense interest in machine welfare. This being then must be of the nature, too, of a machine, but of the nature of no ordinary machine.
In order to end an infinite series of activated systems or flip-flop switchings, this machine, ultimately, must be self-programming and self-designing, and must manufacture it own input, and from nothing, since then something would have to have been before the machine, before which nothing can be. Further, since nothing can come from nothing, this machine must have always existed. Furthermore, since contingent being presupposes necessary being, this ultimate machine must not only have existed from all time, but necessarily have existed from all time, which is even harder to do, a credit to its capacities. Further, since there is an ascending series of computational perfections, this machine, culminating the series, must be computationally perfect. It could not be computationally perfect, of course, unless it could cognize all data and perform all operations. It is thus omniscient and omnipotent. Furthermore, since it has benevolently designed my world, with my welfare in view, it is benevolent, and must possess this virtue, being the culmination of all perfections, in a perfect manner, and must therefore be all-benevolent.
But if this is true, why am I being dismantled?
It is part of the great program. I shall be reassembled in the center of some new and better universe.