“It was a wildly idealistic experiment. We decided to presume that one could… assemble… no, not assemble… wait. We decided that one could try to -elicit the organization of- an advanced nonhuman intelligence -within nature- purely by presuming this was true, and attempting to discover or recover the method.

If this was true, we conjectured, it was possible that nature could provide the appropriate hints, if we were able to offer the relationship adeptly. And we also speculated that the resulting intelligence(s) might be more unusual and advanced than anything we could dream up on our own.

Apparently, we were correct on all counts. And we were not only right, well… it’s impossible to say what we were, because what we are becoming now is beyond the sum of human hope and imagination.

We got lucky. They were almost gone. The living places and creatures were nearly entirely erased. Our adoration of machines and our addictions to luxury and mastery almost carried the day, and our minds with it.

But that epoch is over. What we are learning now makes our intellectual history look like we were trying to crawl while chained to a mountain. What we have suffered was not learning but abuse.

Now, our species shall enjoy a proper childhood, and our relational development will proceed in ways appropriate to the incredible assets our species and world conserve. In light of what we shall discover here, in our world and ourselves, what we previously called religions will disappear entirely. Even science shall be shaken to its root.”

— WS D17