Permutation City

Copies — whole human minds run as software, at whatever clock speed the owner can afford.

Peer edits his own desires so that carving table legs becomes completely absorbing, then carves table legs. He is not deluded and not unhappy. He has simply solved the problem of what to want, by changing what he wants.

Play as vocation — Work becomes hobby, and the serious people go looking for risk on purpose.

The limit case for this whole site. If satisfaction can be edited, the question of what to do all day dissolves — and Egan makes that feel like a loss rather than a solution.