"Oh yeah! Because people study it and then they know what the right things to do are so they don't commit genocides."

"So the Logos means decision theory as well as physics?"

"I think so? I don't know what decision theory is. Mostly I have to go to Virtue class and learn to meditate and resolve conflicts and not smash things when I'm mad." She makes a face.

"Are you starting a career as a mediator? I've heard smashing things when you're mad can be fun but I don't like sudden noises so I haven't tried it."

"No, everyone has to learn that kind of thing, or they'll go around throwing things whenever they get mad or not eating or things like that."

"Huh. When I get mad I mostly complain about whoever I'm mad at to someone else. Or get in an argument. Or cry. We have classes on how to have productive arguments but I don't see how you could have classes on not crying; it'd be like having a class on not sneezing."

"Well," Logic says, "you can distract yourself until you don't feel like crying anymore, or think about it in a different way that makes you less mad, or fix whatever you're mad about."

"Fixing whatever I'm mad about usually works but I can do that and cry at the same time." Shrug. "It makes sense as a thing to practice, though, to get faster at it."

"Oh. When I cry I want to solve my problems by"-- she refuses to admit that running off to the woods is a bad solution to getting a Needs Improvement on her math test-- "biting myself or something."

Jana(A) nibbles thoughtfully on the skin over one of A's knuckles. "Not my favorite distraction, but I can see why someone'd go for it."

"Oh, no, I bite my arm really hard. See?" She shows Jana the marks she left.

"That looks like it'd keep hurting past when you wanted a distraction, so I can see why you'd want to do something else. What else do you learn in Virtue class?"

"So much meditating." Logic makes a face. "My breath is BORING."

"What's meditating?" Jana(A) considers the question of whether A's breath is boring and concludes that it mostly is, except for how it's neat that the air goes into A's nostrils (two pipes) and then A's trachea (one pipe) and then A's bronchial tubes (two pipes again).

"Meditating is"-- she screws up her face trying to remember-- "one of a family of mental techniques intended to reliably induce certain mental states through changes in thought, often involving awareness and concentration on an object of meditation."

"That . . . narrows my hypothesis space some, but I notice that definition includes all of falling asleep, trying not to fall asleep, cheering oneself up by remembering one's plans for tomorrow, getting ready to do something by imagining doing it, and arguably reviewing chess openings. So I think I would need more detail to make any useful predictions."

Oh! This is time to use the skill of Giving An Example!

"Uh, it's learning to concentrate by focusing on your breath, learning to feel compassion by sending positive wishes to people, calming down by breathing slowly, practicing being mindfully aware of things like tea or music so you can really appreciate them, listening to the voice of the logos..."

"Is that last thing a metaphor? Our math doesn't talk except in that people write books about it. We do the being really aware of food or music thing but we don't learn it in school, it's just sort of what eating and listening to music are like. And we mostly learn to feel compassion by talking to people and reading about people, and we learn to concentrate by doing things that take concentration or by playing games."

"Oh! I don't think you know any meditation," she says. "Maybe we should teach you guys meditation so you can talk to the logos."

". . . Wait, does the Logos talk back?"

"Yeah! You feel still and calm inside of you and you can hear its voice." Logic doesn't like doing this because it tells her not to run away from home.

"What does it say? Our physics doesn't talk, it just produces experimental results--I mean, everything anyone perceives is an experimental result and physics also produces the things no-one perceives, but, like. The point is that it's just the process of things happening and not, like, itself separately also a thing."

"Oh, physics is also sentient. But it makes sense that you don't know that yet! We didn't know about freezing people."

"Oh yikes. How did you find out? Is it possible to hurt your physics? How do you reach a Pareto optimum* with a physics? Some people are worried about some kinds of software being sentient but it's not clear how to reach a Pareto optimum with them so mostly we just don't write that kind." Jana(A) really hopes A's physics isn't like that.

*Literally 'no-strictly-better-world', where strictly-better is its own two-syllable word.

"I don't think it's possible to hurt it? It's... physics."