Let’s say I’m offering you a pomegranate, a replica of the Statue of Liberty, anthracite, light bulbs and a fountain pen.
Which of these would you accept and which would you reject? Is knowing your taste, your likes and dislikes, the same as knowing you?
If you would have kept all of the objects listed previously, congratulations! You have the same preferences as a fictional void called “Lack,” an empty universe created as a result of a university physics experiment who is the central character of Pomona College professor Jonathan Lethem’s 1995 sci-fi novel, “As She Climbed Across the Table.”
Lack is a multidisciplinary mystery whose entrance lies in the physics laboratory. Contrary to the expectations of the physicists testing Lack’s properties, Lack doesn’t just have different preferences for the particles they try to send through it, but also accepts and rejects human items in an indecipherable pattern.
Alice, a physicist involved in the experiment, describes Lack’s human-like biases as “vacuum intelligence.” And like the artificial intelligence black boxes of today, which rely on human input but do not make clear to humans their decision-making processes, Lack’s existence provokes a range of responses, from excitement to deep unease.
The novel’s narrator, Phillip, an anxiously verbose anthropology professor, is one of those who feel deep unease with Lack’s possibilities. His relationship with Lack, whom he describes as “an explosion of metaphor into the literal world,” is one of bewildered jealousy.
Why? Alice is Phillip’s girlfriend. And she’s not just studying Lack — she’s falling in love with Lack and out of love with Phillip.
For me, observing this strange love triangle between a physicist, an anthropologist, and an intelligent experiment brought up questions of desirability and bias.
“Which of these would you accept and which would you reject? Is knowing your taste, your likes and dislikes, the same as knowing you?“
The different approaches of Lack’s multidisciplinary researchers reminded me of how STEM and humanities disciplines treat bias differently. It made me think of a recent conversation I had with pre-med friends about what kinds of classes were easier; I preferred opinions and papers, whereas they preferred objectivity and exams.
The idea of bias as incongruous to science is what causes the unexpected relationship problems of Alice and Phillip in “As She Climbed Across the Table.” The two develop strong biases — love and jealousy — toward Lack, an experiment that they are expected to be able to observe impartially.
The novel explores this bias with the physics concept of the observer effect, which Alice calls the “observer problem.” The observer effect is when a system is altered due to the act of observation. This means that observation can easily verge into participation, thus changing the system meant to be objectively observed.
The influence of observers’ bias isn’t just a question limited to academia, and it isn’t just a void-human-human love triangle. It’s also, in this age of artificial intelligence, a question of understanding our relationship with a nonhuman observer of human behavior. Because AI actually amplifies biases and makes users more likely to exhibit racial and gendered bias, AI is not merely observing human behavior but also changing it.
In “As She Climbed Across the Table,” the items Alice feeds to Lack grow increasingly emotionally charged. Alice offers Lack her apartment key and is accepted. Alice offers her hair to Lack and is rejected. Alice offers Lack her self-portraits and is rejected. Alice grows distraught.
But we, the readers and secondary observers of the void, may be unsympathetic to Alice. We have our own experiences with being offered things we don’t want — just think about the last time the algorithm failed you. In a sort of inversion of “As She Climbed Across The Table’s” human-void relationship, we’re constantly being fed a stream of things to like or dislike.
Different from the protagonists of “As She Climbed Across The Table,” who have no idea what’s happening to the random things they’ve thrown into the void, we know what is happening to all the content that we consume. It informs what we decide to talk about, what we decide to buy, who we decide to vote for, if at all. Our attention is then turned into profit.
If you were thrown a copy of “As She Climbed Across The Table,” I’d say you should keep it and find out if Alice’s love is ever acceptable for Lack’s void.
Vivian Fan PO ’28 would like to thank her friend Ila for recommending this book to her. Vivian would also like to thank her father, who is an avid user of ChatGPT.
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