The Basketball Player, the Baby, and the Super Intelligence

A forthcoming book

I have an idea for a book. Three times I’ve tried writing it and three times fizzled out. Through self-diagnosis I’ve identified two main causes for the fizzlage.

The first was practical. 

Some authors have word counts. Some produce one perfect page per day — after 300 days they have 300 perfect pages. Some write story notes for years until the story is so detailed in their mind all they have to do is choose what to share. 

I had no such process when I started this blog, but I committed to publishing an essay every two weeks. By honoring the schedule, four distinct writing phases revealed themselves.

Phase I, typically lasting a few days, is research. Reading, listening, talking, and taking notes. 

Phase II is creative writing. Several days exploration of every thought related to the piece. All ideas in Phase II are free from judgment and persecution. 

Phase III is craft writing. It is the longest period by far, usually an entire week. I use my voice to connect the interesting ideas generated in Phase II with the research from Phase I. There is an aesthetic focus on word choice and style in Phase III. 

Phase IV is editing. All creativity is replaced by polished logic. Unnecessary words and arguments are ripped out, and because almost no creative capital is spent writing, I am actively thinking about the next topic. Starting from scratch the day after publishing is like lifting a car off a child. You can only do it if you are really, really motivated.  

Throughout the writing process I get to step into all four corners of personality: Curiosity -> Creativity -> Craftsmanship -> Conscientiousness. I believe this consistent cycle has cured me from fizzling out for practical reasons.

The second fizzlage cause, which I will describe now, was emotional. 

I always thought it misleading to consider authors artists. Words are black and white. Words tell someone exactly what you think and exactly what to think. 

Turns out that simple model of words is wrong.

This is my 20th post on Substack. In each of the previous 19, and this one, there have been intense periods of sustained anxiety. 

It almost always happened in Phase III that I’d find myself sitting in front of the computer, hands on the keyboard, unable to write.

Whenever I felt this way, the essential question was always the same: What point was I trying to make? 

Using words from my own brain, I’d somehow painted a picture that wasn’t true to my beliefs. I hadn’t properly understood the point or was purposefully burying it.

Some of my published essays have been realistic. Some abstract. Some hyper-realistic, self-biographical, and historically accurate. One thing always remains the same, though. Every word of every sentence is connected to a central point.

As it turns out, anxiety is a gift. It’s a type of energy to be channeled, not ignored. By befriending anxiety I’ve become not just better at making points, but cloaking them in art so that the points are actually more powerful than if I stated them explicitly.

So what is the point of this essay? To tell everyone who’s engaged with Good Information thus far that I’m grateful. It is unlikely I would’ve kept going without the occasional text or email. Whether critique or encouragement, it didn’t really matter. It just mattered that you’ve cared enough to read. 

That said, my essays will be coming a little less frequently. 

I intend on writing a book in next year. 26 weeks should mean 26 chapters.  

I’d still like to publish on here but just know that if you don’t hear from me for a while I’m probably trying to figure out the point of my book. 

I will leave you with the plot (do not hold me to it, everything is subject to change):

Two stories are happen at once. One is nested inside the other. 

In the not too distant future, a God-like super intelligence lives alongside humanity. One of its innovative medical procedures operates on pregnant women uncertain whether they want to carry their babies to term. 

With a perfect map of reality – past, present, and future – the super intelligence predicts what any given woman considering abortion would have done under her own free will. The patient’s brain and body are then connected to the super intelligence and put to sleep. 

While she is under, the super intelligence tells her a dreamlike fantasy that puts her innate pregnancy decision into context. When the patient wakes up, she does not remember the story but her anxiety is gone. Sometimes the baby is gone too. Either way, she is at peace with the choices her body, unconscious mind, and super intelligence made together. 

That is, until Case 09184B23. In Case 09184B23, the dream goes like this:

Perhaps the most talented basketball player on the planet is drafted to save a notoriously underperforming franchise. The owners of the basketball team are also third-generation owners of a Google-Facebook-Amazon-like tech conglomerate. 

The star player’s girlfriend gets pregnant accidentally. After months of deliberation, they decide to keep the baby girl. Tragically, the young mother dies in childbirth and the basketball player gives the baby to his brother and sister-in-law who cannot have children of their own. 

The girl is raised not knowing the truth about her father. The trauma from the incident is ongoing, affecting the star player’s promising career.

To help the basketball player, the tech conglomerate family gives him advanced access to an artificial intelligence being developed in secret. Athlete and computer form a bond as the computer helps him repair his career and his relationship to his daughter that thinks is his niece.

But the athlete has an equally strong effect on the artificial intelligence. Their bond helps the AI map parts of human consciousness it wasn’t understanding. During a critical time in the basketball player’s life, the artificial intelligence rapidly evolves into a super intelligence changing dynamics of human culture overnight.

There is a critical error in this dream, however. In Case 09184B23, the super intelligence has inserted a patient as a main character in her own procedure. The real life patient is also the daughter-niece of the basketball player from the dream. To make matters worse, the super intelligence in the dream is the same super intelligence conducting the procedure. 

By the time the main character is conscious of what’s happening to her, it’s too late to stop. She has to finish the procedure or risk damaging her and the super intelligence’s unconscious minds. 

What we get to read is essentially a transcript of Case 09184B23. 

We read the dreamlike fantasy the super intelligence wrote to cure the main character’s pregnancy anxiety while simultaneously reading real-time conversations between the main character and super intelligence as they deal with the story and it’s affect on her pregnancy.

So now you know the plot, but you’ll have to read the book to figure out the point!

-Dev

P.S. It will not be titled The Basketball Player, the Baby, and the Super Intelligence. I won’t do C.S. Lewis like that.

P.S.S. I hope to you hear from you soon.