"I think that who's the good person who wants to make things better depends on the topic a little too much of the time. Some people act like slaying evil dragons is correlated with not cheating on your taxes is correlated with being decent to live downstairs from is correlated with being a decent parent, and I'm not sure any of that's true."

"That's true. I don't have an objective definition for what's a good person, but there are so many different people that I pretty much guarantee that any definition that doesn't demand effectiveness is going to describe some people who exist."

"Sounds likely."

"Well, that's statistics. ...Does statistics count as science?"

"Pretty sure it doesn't. I mean, unless you then poke the population you did statistics on and collect more."

"It's a pretty soft line, what counts as science and what doesn't."

"The most useful way to think about is probably to imagine that the universe is a person. Who is very private and mercurial, and sometimes prickly and also omnipotent. If you just sort of go about your life, you're only looking at the parts of the universe that it would be letting you see anyway. If you start experimenting on it, you're trying to oblige it to be consistent, or consistent in its inconsistency, and moreover you're trying to hold it accountable to you, and it gets - annoyed, embarrassed, angry. And if you're lucky all that happens is now you have a curse that when near you apples sometimes fall sideways and if you're unlucky you're dead."

"Now I'm vaguely curious if I could sense such a person if you opened the door but I doubt it and I suspect trying would be suicide at best."

"Can you sense who's taking your door away? Because if you can't do that I don't think you'll have better luck with my universe."

"I did say I doubted it. But it seems like even futilely trying would count as poking things in a way that you describe as being fantastically unwise. Although I suppose it probably couldn't get me as long as I stayed in Milliways."

"I'd rate 'trying to sense a mind to the universe' as 'probably safe to try for a moment or two as long as you didn't do it in some particularly sciencey way', but my safety standards may be calibrated wrong for you."

"Okay, I was working off our description, and the first thing you said was very private, and if I were a cranky person inclined to swatting people who poked me with magnifying glasses, I would take extreme exception to a strange kind of telepath trying to read my mind. But I suppose the sheer futility might counterweigh it."

"Yeah, futility is a protective feature. I wouldn't advise trying to read the universe's mind at all, if that wasn't clear, just tell it's there - like what you can get off me if I'm just standing here."

"I'm sort of going with 'err on the side of paranoia'."

"That is an entirely reasonable decision."

"Thought it might be, yeah."

"All right." She heads toward the door.

The door stays put this time!

"If you try it the universe gets mad and your result is not 'scientific marvels' but 'badness'."

"That...sounds like it sucks," Kurt observes.

"It kind of sucks!"