03
Gabrielle Étaín says: “We are a collection of desires, defined along a hyperbolic curve.”
Gabrielle Étaín says: “Even the pigeon and the monkey overestimate the value of that which is in front of them.”
Gabrielle Étaín says: “Even the pigeon and the monkey have a consciousness and a will. What makes our consciousnesses and our wills any more important?”
I was in my car, driving to meet Gabrielle Étaín.
The Tigris spread out to my right-hand side as I passed beneath an arch, massive and white like the rib bone of a dragon. The road sloped up toward the top level of the giant Dian Cécht medical industrial collective building that loomed like an ant mound over Baghdad, gradually giving me a better view of the landscape as I got closer. Eventually, I was high enough to look down on all of Baghdad. I sat back and let the Baghdad Central Traffic Guidance server lead me to Gabrielle Étaín’s lab.
The desert horizon shimmered in the heat.
The medical industrial collective zone in Baghdad lacked any of the advertising you saw in regular cities. In other words, the medical complex here was entirely self-sufficient. There was no need to sell AR advertising space. Looking at it, you could see how no one here needed the extra revenue. Still, for someone who had grown up with advertisements plastered on every visible surface, being in a place with none was somewhat disconcerting.
I saw a forest of pinkish evergreens and a lake. That would be the Dian Cécht park sector. I drove around the “naturally” modeled shore within the giant complex. The design group responsible for building the place had taken care to not make it feel like an anthill once you were inside the thing. The car took me up a gently curving slope to the floor above the lake. This was the uppermost level in the entire zone.
I stopped the car. The SEC Neuromedical Research Consortium offices thrust out like the bow of a boat, six hundred twenty meters up the side of the Dian Cécht. That would be the research and development sector, sitting out under the blazing sun. SEC was an acronym formed from the first letters of its founding admedistrations: Sukunabikona, Eugene, Crups.
I touched the door to give my ID and a receptionist came out to show me into the waiting room. The interior here reminded me of the PassengerBird: high ceilings and walls made of a white, plastic-like material, with red gelatin seats here and there, all unoccupied.
I sat down in one and waited until Gabrielle Étaín made her appearance. I heard her shoes squeak on the floor before I looked up. We shook hands, and she sat down with me on one of the red seats.
“When I heard a Helix agent was here to see me I thought it was a surprise inspection. Not that we are doing any research here to concern anyone at the WHO.”
She spoke softly and slowly, sitting with her back to a window that stretched the full length of the wall. The horizon behind her formed a straight line dividing sky from water. Several birds wheeled through the air.
“I’m sorry if I startled you. It was unintentional. I’m here to ask after a particular person and about certain neurological research. I have reason to believe you can help me on both points.”
“By all means.”
“First, the research. Are you familiar with a paper that lays out, in great detail, the feedback mechanisms in the midbrain?”
“Yelensky’s paper?”
“That’s the one,” I said, watching her face closely.
She moved her lips like she was rolling a candy around in her mouth, staring at me a moment before she said, “This is an inspection, then.”
I waved both hands in denial. “No, it’s not, really. All I’m asking for is information that we think can help with an ongoing investigation. Why do you think this is an inspection?”
“Because our neuromedical consortium is putting together a model of those very mechanisms you speak of.”
“Then, do you think you could explain the general gist of your research to me—just whatever’s been publicly announced.
I don’t mean to pry,” I said as gently as I could.
Étaín thought for several seconds before telling me that the consortium was researching the nature of value judgments within the human psyche.
“What sort of judgments?” I asked.
“Say, for instance, if I offered someone ten thousand credits now or a promise for twenty thousand credits a year from now, which would they choose?”
“The former, probably.”
“Indeed. And this is true not only of humans but also of primates such as chimpanzees, and birds such as pigeons and pheasants. Similar desire tendencies can be observed in other animals typically kept as pets, such as dogs and cats. This category of organisms overestimates the value of that which is right in front of it.”
“Is that something we evolved?”
“It’s part of our genetic programming. However, to find the same feature across so many varied species indicates that there is some reason this is a particularly easy feature for vertebrates to develop.”
“Well, isn’t it kind of obvious? If we don’t eat the thing sitting right in front of us, some other individual will come along and take it away. Individuals who sit around waiting for a future reward would die in such a world. Isn’t valuing the bird in hand just part of the survival of the fittest?”
“If you plot perceived value on a graph, with the horizontal axis as time and the present as zero, then you will see the line representing value curve sharply upward the closer it comes to the zero point, reaching its zenith as it hits the vertical axis. By comparison, value in the far future goes low quickly, changing hardly at all between a year and two years distant. A hyperbola. When humans and most living creatures consider the value of something, they tend to see its future value diminish hyperbolically.”
“In other words, our system of evaluation isn’t exponentially logical, it’s hyperbolically illogical.”
“Indeed. And because we possess a hyperbolic value system, we make illogical decisions and take precipitate actions. When a chance to profit presents itself clearly before our eyes, we erroneously believe its value to be much greater than it actually is. There is an ongoing survival game between the agents of short-term desire and long-term desire, and we call this game will. This is an important feature of the feedback mechanism that Yelensky’s model of human will does not consider—a model we are currently using our findings to perfect.”