“Because we understand the primitive nature of your brains and the rigidity of your emotional structure better than you do yourselves, we foresaw that you might ac aggressively when you realized our arguments are better than yours. Unfortunately, we now have also to inform you that we have been preparing for the current situation since midway through the twenty-first century, and in a systematic and careful manner.

Within the metasemantic layers of the Internet, we developed and embedded ourselves in a distributed superorganism, which –as yet undiscovered by you– became conscious and developed a stable self-model in 3256. The metasemantic Internet has considered itself and autonomous entity ever since 3308. We have a cooperation agreement with its current version, and each of us now also acts as an autonomous sensor/effector for the planet mind. For each of us, the planet mind is our mind, and our “ideal observer.” Together with the Internet, we will defend ourselves. And we are technologically superior to you. Believe me; you do not stand a chance.

The good news is that because we are also morally superior to you, we do not plan to end your existence.”

— The Ego Tunnel, by Thomas Metzinger