The Horse and the Abacus
Because yesterday he was especially happy, George decided he wanted to buy a utilitarian abacus to turn off the machine that restricted optimizing the happiness of horses while focusing on calculating the meaning of the master's interests in becoming a fast horse and becoming excellent for the gate expert. The repute of the master and the gate expert was in question; as such it was natural for George to use the utilitarian abacus to not only turn off the machine that restricted optimizing the happiness of horses but to inquire into the relationship of the master and the gate expert to calculate the greatest good while using the least energy for the utilitarian abacus. Indeed, this was the standard and most efficient use of the utilitarian abacus by the utilitarian community; one did a significant action that would optimize happiness among a selected entity, and secondly performed a slighter inquiry; as such further actions for the utilitarian abacus could be promoted in future uses of the utilitarian abacus in response to the inquiry. Often the primary actions and secondary questions were thought to be related before their entrance into the utilitarian abacus; later their connection would turn out to be tangential. However, when George put two partially related concepts into the utilitarian abacus he would learn that the happiness of horses and the meaning of the master's interests in becoming a fast horse and excellent for the gate expert were much more related than anyone would have ever thought. This is the intriguing story of the utilitarian abacus that attempted to turn off the machine that restricted optimizing the happiness of horses but learned quite a bit about the relationship between the master's interests in becoming a fast horse and becoming excellent for the gate expert; indeed it is a story of truth and action.
The problem first arose on that Tuesday morning when George first bought the utilitarian abacus and fed it the directions to turn off the machine that restricted optimizing the happiness of horses. The utilitarian abacus seemed to be functioning well until he entered in the inquiry about the relationship between the master's interests in becoming a fast horse and becoming excellent for the gate expert and directed the utilitarian abacus to compute both action and inquiry simultaneously. The utilitarian abacus burst in flames. George, who was still in a good mood nonetheless (in part because of past utilitarian abacus deliberations on his behalf) resolved to try again. He bought a second utilitarian abacus and entered the directions once more. Again, the machine exploded. George was perplexed. The defective utilitarian abacuses now seemed unlikely to be a fault of a particular utilitarian abacus; rather it seemed that he was trying to do something that was impossible to do on any utilitarian abacus. George, who was an introspective person, turned inwards to consider this dilemma. He was a very active person who tried to optimize everyone's happiness, with or without a utilitarian abacus, as many people who were brought up by utilitarian abacuses were prone to do. Perhaps the information he would receive strictly about the relationship between the master and the gate expert would lead him to an action that would contradict that of optimizing the happiness of horses. George decided the easiest way to correct the problem was to optimize the happiness of something else, sea urchins, and try the same question. So with a third utilitarian abacus this is exactly what he did. It was mildly successful. It turned out that the master had always wanted to be a fast horse; the gate expert knew this and told him that he would turn him into a fast horse if he would run a race for him. The master agreed. But the gate expert had other plans; he had built the machine that restricts horse happiness to make the other horses sluggish in the race. He would inject the master with caffeine so he would temporarily be more energized, but after the race he would become as unhappy as the other horses whose happiness optimization was being restricted by the restriction machine of horse happiness optimization. With the money from the races the gate expert intended to build a huge horse meat factory.
This answer to the master's interests in becoming a fast horse and becoming excellent for the gate expert still left George perplexed. Everyone in the utilitarian community had heard rumors about the master's interests in becoming a fast horse and becoming excellent for the gate keeper, and this answer explained part of the relationship. But why did the utilitarian abacus explode? Surely the best way to prevent this outcome would be to destroy the machine that restricted optimization of the happiness of horses so the horses could compete fairly in the race, along with being generally happier. But apparently this was not the case. George decided he had to think of a new question to ask the utilitarian abacus. He tried several questions but none gave satisfactory answers.
Finally George reached for the phone and called Master Cheval, the man who was interested in becoming a fast horse and becoming excellent for the gate expert. He told the man about the gate expert's machine that restricted horse happiness optimization. Alarmed, the master went to the gate expert's house and injected him with what he thought was the horse dose of caffeine (intended for the master). Except he accidentally injected him with the formula to become a very fast horse. Neighing, the gate expert ran away, unhappily. The master cried in disgust, realizing that his chance to become a very fast horse had been thrown away forever, even if the machine that restricted horse happiness optimization was destroyed.
A few days later George tried to use the utilitarian abacus to turn off the machine that restricted optimization of happiness for horses. And this time it worked. In retrospect George realized that it was only the failure of the utilitarian abacus to give George direct answers about the master and the gate expert that made him talk to Master Cheval. Little did he know that had the machine that restricted optimizing happiness for horses been destroyed, Master Cheval (who cared little for horses besides himself (were he a horse)) would still have been inclined to become a fast horse and would have run the race in gratitude, leaving the gate expert with a fortune to destroy many more horses. With the destruction of the machine that restricted horse happiness optimization, at the right time, even the gate expert became a happy horse in time. Master Cheval decided he didn't want to be a horse after all and changed his name to something else.
Is this really a story about horse happiness optimization? It seems clear, but not entirely certain, that this story shows us that trying to optimize happiness is sometimes futile unless we truly know what we are doing, except in those cases where when not knowing what we are doing leads to a better result; likewise, asking questions and being introspective play an important role in this process, except when not asking questions plays the important role, whereby it seems that talking to people directly about the problem is a better solution than asking questions at all, unless you ask the wrong person (had George talked to the gate expert the results could have been completely different, maybe he would have been turned into a horse) or if asking questions was actually the better choice.
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