A LUCILIUS PARABLE: ROSE-COLORED WORLD

February 26th, 2023

Lucilius was scrolling his news feed, and the expression on his face was one of being throughly unimpressed.  His interaction with the information world as it pertained to current events had evolved into a kind of depressed anthropological exercise. He tosses his phone to an open spot on his bed and laid back. 

His eyes traced the spines on his bookcase and got stuck on the title of a book on evolutionary psychology. He remembered reading about a stupidly simple experiment in the book. Given a sheet filled with smilie faces and one frown face, people will pick out the frown face much faster than if the experiment is reversed: if it’s all frown faces and there’s one smilie to find.

“It’s hardwired into us,” Lucilius muttered. And it made him wonder. What would the world look like if that hardwired tendency were reversed?

Clearly it existed for good reason. Being cautious, even overly-cautious was extremely beneficial in the natural world. Failing to notice a predator stalking your every move generally meant getting plucked out of the gene pool.

“We are the descendants of the paranoid.” Lucilius stated out loud. He laughed. “Oh well.”

He instinctively grabbed his phone again and started scrolling the depressing news feed. He swiped up with his thumb again and something caught his eye.

“Neuralsync released app API”

“What the…” Lucilius muttered.

He clicked on the story and after reading a few lines, Lucilius sat up. A few minutes later he was sitting at his computer reading documentation for the API. That night he got to work.

It took a few weeks before he could get his Neuralsync implant, but by that time he’d already built his app. 

Neuralsync was a brain machine interface that required cutting away part of the skull and implanting wires deep into the brain. A rather serious procedure from the sounds of it, but Lucilius had been consumed by an idea he’d had and nothing would stop him. He had to know what it would feel like…

Returning home, he gingerly felt the area of his head where the skin had been peeled back. The skin was tender with stitches but other than that, he couldn’t feel or notice anything different. 

He connected his computer to the BMI via bluetooth, and his finger hovered above the ENTER key to initiate the app he’d built.

During the weeks while he waited for his appointment, Lucilius had stormed through neurological research. He had a degree in neurology but it had been a few years since he’d put any of the information to practical use. Luckily there was a slew of new data and research due to the Neuralsync innovation and Lucilius had been able to pinpoint exactly the target he was aiming for and design code around it.

The app was designed to switch the default caution focus of the human brain. Instead of being innately and immediately interested by negative things, the app would allow anyone to switch the default to positive things. Lucilius was dying to know how the world would look. He knew it might make him more susceptible to danger. Would he notice something truly bad in time to save himself from it? In this environment, in modern society, was it even an issue? He wondered. Perhaps he could toggle a percentage of it so it wasn’t a polar determination. 

He briefly considered how long it would take to code in this feature, his finger hovering above the ENTER key.

“Ah screw it.”

He pushed the key and initiated the app.