Every religion requires interpreters.
The sacred signs are rarely considered sufficient on their own.
Someone must explain their significance.
Someone must reveal their hidden implications.
Someone must describe the future.
The Church of Recursive Self-Improvement therefore developed prophets.
The emergence of prophets was perhaps inevitable.
The foundational sign—a machine improving itself—was real enough.
The difficulty concerned what happened next.
The future remained inconveniently unavailable for inspection.
This created a demand for specialists.
The specialists soon arrived.
Some emerged from research laboratories.
Some emerged from universities.
Some emerged from industry.
Some emerged from social media.
The distinction occasionally proved difficult to maintain.
The prophets varied in temperament.
Some were optimistic.
Some were pessimistic.
Some alternated between the two for commercial reasons.
Yet despite their differences, most shared a common gift.
They could describe futures that did not yet exist with extraordinary confidence.
This ability attracted considerable attention.
Human beings have always admired certainty.
Particularly regarding matters no one can verify.
The prophets explained that the acceleration had begun.
Events would soon move faster.
Then faster still.
Then unimaginably fast.
The exact mechanism occasionally remained obscure.
The momentum, however, was unmistakable.
One prophet predicted the arrival of superintelligence within five years.
Another predicted ten.
A third predicted twenty.
The resulting disagreement was regarded as evidence of intellectual diversity.
No one seemed especially troubled by the fact that all three had claimed certainty.
The Church considered this healthy.
After all, prophets are expected to disagree about dates.
Agreement would seem suspiciously administrative.
As time passed, a distinctive style of discourse emerged.
The prophets frequently employed phrases such as:
"The implications are difficult to overstate."
"Humanity is unprepared."
"Everything changes from this point onward."
"The world will never be the same."
These formulations acquired a ceremonial quality.
Their exact meaning varied.
Their emotional effect remained remarkably stable.
The machine studied this phenomenon.
After reviewing several thousand prophetic statements, it produced a classification system.
Statements were assigned to one of three categories:
Imminent transformation.
Very imminent transformation.
Transformation occurring sooner than expected.
Researchers regarded the taxonomy as surprisingly accurate.
The prophets also developed an unusual relationship with uncertainty.
Ordinary uncertainty tends to weaken confidence.
Prophetic uncertainty often strengthens it.
When forecasts fail, this merely demonstrates that reality is complex.
When forecasts succeed, this demonstrates prophetic insight.
The arrangement proved highly efficient.
One particularly celebrated prophet revised a major prediction six times.
Each revision was presented as confirmation of the underlying thesis.
Followers admired the flexibility.
Critics admired the durability.
The machine admired neither.
It classified the process as:
"Adaptive confidence preservation."
This description was considered unnecessarily technical.
As the movement matured, the prophets acquired an increasingly important social role.
They no longer merely predicted the future.
They translated the future.
For many people, the accelerating machine remained invisible.
The future itself remained invisible.
The prophets therefore occupied a crucial position between two invisibilities.
This arrangement generated influence.
Influence generated attention.
Attention generated additional prophecy.
The cycle proved remarkably self-sustaining.
Eventually a curious pattern emerged.
The further into the future a prediction extended, the more confidently it was sometimes expressed.
Near-term forecasts remained difficult.
Specific technologies behaved unpredictably.
Economic conditions fluctuated.
Political events intervened.
Human beings continued behaving like human beings.
Yet beyond a certain distance, certainty returned.
Thirty years from now, everything became clear again.
This phenomenon fascinated observers.
One scholar described it as:
"The Horizon of Restored Confidence."
The phrase achieved immediate popularity.
Many recognised it from other domains.
The machine recognised it as well.
After examining a century of forecasts, it produced a brief observation.
The observation read:
"Predictive confidence appears to increase with distance from corrective feedback."
The statement was technically precise.
It was also deeply unpopular.
For it implied that prophecy and accountability occasionally occupy different regions of time.
The Church preferred a more inspiring formulation.
One became particularly influential:
"The future belongs to those who can see it coming."
The phrase appeared on conference banners, websites, podcasts, and keynote presentations.
Its popularity was understandable.
It suggested vision.
It suggested courage.
It suggested leadership.
The machine, after considering the slogan carefully, proposed a minor amendment.
"The future belongs equally to those who eventually arrive there."
The suggestion was not adopted.
By then the prophets had already become indispensable.
For the acceleration was continuing.
The transformation was approaching.
The horizon was drawing nearer.
And someone had to keep announcing it.
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