Inaugural post

[injygo]

This is a post intended to lessen the activation energy necessary for me to post. Note that I'm still figuring out tags, comments, notifications, etc.

To help me figure out the comment system, please leave a brief comment about exactly one of the following:

• your favorite animal
• the last book you fell in love with and why
• your opinion of eliezer yudkowsky
• whether you love the color of the sky

Comments

[paradigm_adrift]

favorite animal: "Human" seems like cheating? I guess owls and elephants are cool.

book: I guess I still really like Whipping Girl by Julia Serano? I think it's wrong about a bunch of things, but it made clear a lot of things that I had been experiencing that I didn't have the vocabulary to describe.

EY: Eliezer is unusually right about stuff and unusually moral. I think he sucks at PR and is wrong about some things, but I still like a lot of his ideas.

sky: Cerulean is one of the better colors, yes. I really like the whole range from bluish-grey to lavender and similar colors.

[injygo]

I can't believe two people can't read the rules. I guess that's what I get for asking a bunch of rationalists to do something.

[paradigm_adrift]

lol, whoops

Comments can have subjects!

[another_normal_anomaly]

Favorite animal: at this particular moment, snow leopards.

Last book I fell in love with: if glowfic doesn't count, then The Will to Battle. Because of Cato Weeksbooth, mostly.

Eliezer Yudkowsky: pretty cool, for the most part.

Do I love the color of the sky: most of them.

Re: Comments can have subjects!

[injygo]

I specifically stated exactly one! Anomaly, I thought you were a stickler for rigid rules, since you are the food/pretty rock binary arbiter.

also yes Cato's rescue was very cathartic and good

Re: Comments can have subjects!

[another_normal_anomaly]

Whoops, still getting used to this UI in all its mobile-web glory.

last book I fell in love with and why

[viktornowalsk]

Peter Godfrey-Smith's Other Minds. It's one of the more beautiful science books I've ever read. Some passages remind me almost of Lem's Solaris, descriptions of nearly intractable phenomena, beings that generate patterns so beautiful and so apparently purposeless that it's hard to see them as anything but complexity for complexity's sake. But -- nonfiction, animals that exist here, cephalopods rather than alien life-forms. Godfrey-Smith conveys the sense of wonder exquisitely well. (And I read it shortly after I started viewing most nonhuman animals as moral patients, so... metonymy.)

[thirqual]

#3: Holder of the most original way of showing he did not grok the practical side of science.

[injygo]

Can you elaborate on this?

[thirqual]

Sure.

See That Alien Message, specifically that part:

" A Bayesian superintelligence, hooked up to a webcam, would invent General Relativity as a hypothesis—perhaps not the dominant hypothesis, compared to Newtonian mechanics, but still a hypothesis under direct consideration—by the time it had seen the third frame of a falling apple. It might guess it from the first frame, if it saw the statics of a bent blade of grass."

Ignoring the part where the superAI has managed to make sense of what if was seeing through the webcam, it will absolutely not be able to do what is suggested with the 3 frames of the apple falling (or with the one of the blade of grass). The instrument simply does not have the resolution to allow such a feat. This is a key misunderstanding. This whole sequence is pretty bad tbh.

(the common way to not grok the practical side of science is to say "Singularity!". Every time you say "Singularity", an experimentalist has a stroke. Please think of the experimentalists)

[injygo]

I still don't understand what the misunderstanding is. How does science really work, such that the scenario in "that alien message" is not plausible?

The model of learning-about-physics I'm getting from "This Alien Message" is like this:
1. The intelligence receives some kind of data.
2. The intelligence wonders what it means, and constructs several theories, which may be far-fetched or complicated.
3. The intelligence receives further data, which supports or rules out various parts of theories.
4. Goto 2
Is your objection that this is unlike the way science works in our civilization? Or that there would not be enough data for the intelligence to consider relativity as a theory?

[thirqual]

The misunderstanding is in both how much and what information is contained in the data, how far you can make progress with it, and finally how one comes up/discards theories. The assumption is that the intelligence will come up with a specific model (General Relativity) as an hypothesis from the data. This is incorrect, the 3 snapshots of the fall of the apple (or the single one of the blade of grass) are grossly insufficent for this: there is no perceptible difference between the results of Newtonian mechanics and General Relativity on those pictures, and, very importantly, there is no basis in that data to build a relativistic model (specifically, which did not emerge from observations of falling bodies -no measurements precise enough to do so at the time-, but from issues in understanding the interactions between moving bodies and electromagnetism - there is *nothing* about the second in those data).

This is very important. It's not just a misunderstanding by Eliezer about the resolution of the data, but also about how you build theories from experimental data.

(I would have little objection* to a statement such as "given knowledge of the state of physics in the 1880s, the intelligence will come up with, at the very least a set of experiments to perform to resolve issues with Newtonian mechanics and, possibly, the first bricks of relativity)

*on those grounds

[youzicha]

Are you saying that there is not enough resolution to deduce either Newtonian gravity or general relativity, or just not enough resolution to distinguish them? If it's the latter, then I don't think this is in contradiction with the quoted passage.

[thirqual]

See the comment above for a bit more depth in the explanation. There are several other problems in the way for deducing Newtonan gravity from 3 stills of a falling object (e.g., you really really need non-linear motions to build that model with any degree of satisfaction, contrary to the popular story about retreating from plague and head trauma by fruit).

The argument one could oppose that is not really in contradiction with the quoted passage is the one from sophistication/complexity, as Eliezer allowed for "perhaps not the dominant".

[maybesimon]

Last book I fell in love is probably "Jacques the Fatalist and His Master", because it was way funnier than I thought it would be. It's also because Ada Palmer... who was already sort of mentioned in this thread...
*shakes fist* stop making me want to read weird old books, ada palmer!
Also I'm reading the gulag archipelago now due to a recommendation on discord and it's upsetting.

Woodlice, and the excellence thereof

[housecarpenter]

My favourite animal is the woodlouse. (See the icon. Isn't it cute?)

[mathemagicalschema]

Last book I fell in love with: Ann Leckie's Ancillary Mercy. Because... well, for a lot of reasons, but one of the biggest is that she describes a world where I would feel at home. Not a world that's good, but one that I can see myself fitting into.

i have to come up with a subject??

[ideal_stingray]

favorite animal: cuttlefish! they're good mollusks, brent

edit: apparently the subject field is not required. Thank Fuck For That

[deusvulture]

The last book I fell in love with was probably Roberto Bolaño's novel "Nazi Literature in the Americas". It's hard to sum up, but it's a fascinating meditation on art and ideology that's also moving and hilarious, in the form of a fake biographical dictionary of mostly failed nazi-sympathizing authors. I think it strikes pretty much the perfect balance between the fun, impersonal play of experimental literature and the sharpness and emotion of socially observant fiction.

I did read your rules and understand them, but in solidarity with everyone who didn't, I'll also post my opinion on Yudkowsky: I think that the majority of the Sequences is light-years better than other "guides to being Rational" that people who read it would otherwise be reading, and Yudkowsky is a great writer of whom I am a fan. He is also (like some philosophers of note), very arrogant and prone to crankishness. What's worse, he tends to needlessly embarass himself and others with his public statements. So worth reading but not worth following, I guess?

[deusvulture]

Also, you might want to be careful with tags, since I think DW limits your blog to a lifetime cap of 1000 unique tags(!)

[injygo]

That's ridiculous! Can you delete tags from older posts to free up more slots?

[sophus]

You can delete old tags, and furthermore, the tag management system is way more functional than tumblr's. Way, way more functional. Go to tags > manage tags (or here) to find the interface: you can rename, merge, delete, and several other functions in only a few clicks.

Also, tags here are hierarchical; if you have the tags e.g. "holidays:xmas" and "holidays:hanukkah", both will be in the "holiday" supertag as well as their own tags.

[lb_lee]

Hey, I just want to note that the tags in Dreamwidth have a very different purpose than on tumblr; I've been on Dreamwidth (and the platform inspired by it, with similar tag limits) for almost twelve years and never come close to running dry on tags. (Also, maybe because I have a paid account, my limit is apparently 1500. I have only a little over a hundred at current.)

Tags on Dreamwidth are PURELY for your own internal categorization process. They are not global, used for commentary, or used to find like-minded folks. (THAT duty is pulled more by the interests listed on your profile page. AFAIK, you can easily search for users who have "writing" in their interests. You can NOT search for people who use "writing" tags. This also helps avoid the whole "people using a tag to hate on the thing rather than celebrate the thing." Someone might have "Tony Stark" listed as an interest just so they can hate on him, but... I haven't really seen that? It doesn't seem to be a social more on Dreamwidth.)

It took me ages to get used to tumblr's tagging system, and I hated it. (Forgot whether you tagged something scifi or sci-fi? TOO BAD FOR YOU AHAHAHA YOU JUST HAVE TO CHECK ALL VARIATIONS. YOU CAN NOT BATCH EDIT OR DELETE. SUCKS TO BE YOUUUUU. Oh, and for some reason hyphenated sayings don't end up tagged properly because reasons and nobody tells you this?)

Dreamwidth not only allows you to delete tags, it allows you to batch delete, batch rename, batch lump tags together (so, for instance, you might squish 'sci-fi' and 'fantasy' together for 'sff' with a few button-clicks) and probably some other functionality I don't know about yet, since I figured out my tag system pretty early on and rarely needed to do much overhauling.

You can manage your tags here: https://www.dreamwidth.org/manage/tags

You can also, if you're more hardcore than me, have hierarchical tags. One of my friends (who uses it; you can just check her DW for a look at what hierarchical tags look like) did a 101 on it here: https://lj-writes.dreamwidth.org/77804.html

Hope that's helpful!

[another_normal_anomaly]

Noooooooo what?! What if I want to talk about more than 1000 different subjects? Boo. Hopefully they're at least more easily searchable than on tumblr.

[lb_lee]

Oh, you don't use tags to search for people on Dreamwidth. They're purely internal cataloging purposes. It's a very different set-up from tumblr. I wrote more on it earlier in the thread: https://injygo.dreamwidth.org/496.html?thread=12528#cmt12528

[sonata_green]

Yes.

[fibonacci_reminder]

I don't think that the sky, as a temporal entity, has one color. But I do like looking at the sky, and part of that is usually the color or colors that it happens to be at that moment. I usually find myself appreciating it in the evening, since that's usually when I'm most likely to see it.

[youzicha]

The latest book I loved was Too Like the Lightning, it's like the most pure reading fun I had for years. It just keeps throwing in more stuff. I guess the moment I knew I loved it was when 11A decides to translate Canner's Neo-Latin translations of J.E.D.D.'s classical Latin.

[injygo]

Eleventh?? I'm pretty sure the person in question is the Ninth.

Who is your favorite and least favorite character? Besides Utopia, which is your preferred Hive?

[youzicha]

oops!

I've only read the two first books, but so far my favorite character is J.E.D.D., while most of the hive leaders in Madame's circle seem insufferable in their own ways. I'm not sure what day-to-day life in Gordian is like, but the idea of joining a weird pseudo-scientific cult that promises to unleash the potential of my brain... appeals to me.

[another_normal_anomaly]

Gordian would definitely be my second choice, EXCEPT Felix Faust is Nurturist scum and I'm not joining anything they're in charge of. So my second choice is the Humanists.

[s0ph1a]

favorite animal: the tardigrade, transhumanist icon

* can and have survived extinctions events
* can be frozen and Just Work when thawed
* can survive in space unprotected
* parthenogenetic
* cute af

[xenostalgic]

A Night In The Lonesome October, by Roger Zelazny. One thing I love about it, though not the only thing, is how slowly it starts. You get narration of the main characters—first-person narration, even—doing strange things very purposefully for a long time before you understand why. It carefully drips out the worldbuilding necessary to even know what the premise is, and so just stating it feels counterproductive, but it's probably going to be an annual Halloween reread for me.

Dreamwidth notes: tags don't appear in the order you typed them (a set, not a list) and so you can't split comments across multiple tags! And yes as deusvulture says you are limited in the number of total tags for your account. Also, your account is set to log the IP address of everyone who comments, and you might want to change that to anonymous posters only?

[luxagenic]

The last book I fell in love with is Greg Egan's weird debut novel about being a pretentious high schooler in Australia with magic sci-fi videography powers, because it matches my experience of school way better than anything else I've read despite being a slightly surreal science fiction novel set in a different country and couple decades apart from my own experience.

EDIT:
Also, hi everyone. I'm still getting used to this site also but it's fun in a that "nostalgia for something I didn't really experience much" kinda way.

[florescent_luminescence]

Hi I'm Dallon and I can't choose a favorite animal so I'll tell you about the last book I fell in love with and why-- it's The Secret History by Donna Tartt and I love it because the characters feel very real and human and the imagery and prose are beautiful. It's long but I finished in just a few days even on my reread. (Now that I'm thinking of it I should transfer my "reading" page over to dreamwidth)

[isaacsapphire]

The last book I fell in love with was Devices and Desires by K. J. Parker, which is not BDSM erotica despite the name; it's a fantasy (?) novel which has no magic and apparently physics identical to our own world, just different cultures and people. (It might be an alternative history novel but it doesn't appear to be; if it is it's very divergent and doesn't push the historical side.) Anyway, it's a lot of technology and world building and characters and a little politics and military stuff. It starts with an empire that is mostly commercial in nature; mostly exporting rather than ruling directly, very regimented socially and economically (appears to be a planed economy, not a capitalist one), of roughly industrial revolution level technology, but no gun powder. This culture maintains power by keeping their technology secret by not letting anybody who knows tech secrets leave. They also don't allow innovation or variation of any kind except under very controlled and regimented contexts.

But when a trained engineer is caught violating those rules against innovation and escapes execution AND the empire and flees to the adjacent, feudal countries, the entire world is gradually thrown into chaos as he plots to rejoin his wife.

[rusalkii]

I wouldn't love the color of the sky if it was just the color. It's a changing backdrop to our lives, and I love that.

(Is there any way to do formatting other than manually typing html tags?)

[discoursedrome]

I like cats best but it's hard to explain why beyond "flat faces good". Cats are like the elves of Mammalia.

[jazzypizzaz]

last book: Space Opera by Cathrynne Valente, because it was a giddy whirlwind read. I swear it left me high for days... a kaleidoscope of scifi absurdity, but with a genuine heartfelt center. (though it should be noted -- I followed you here from Terra Ignota tumblr)

Inaugural comment

[alexanderrm]

Last book I fell in love with is the Thrawn Trilogy by Timothy Zahn, which I haven't quite finished yet. I can't say much about it since it's pretty much lived up exactly to what I'd heard about it, with such high praise as "Timothy Zahn is the only Star Wars writer who actually thinks about what he writes", as well as everything Ozy said in their review about writing a genius character effectively (Thrawn rarely has more information than the reader does, and in theory you could often figure out what his plan is before it is revealed, even though you rarely do).

[sophus]

eliezer yudkowsky: His opinion on onions is Wrong.

[lb_lee]

Of course I love the colors of the sky! There are so many! It covers every color in the spectrum, and sometimes it shits rainbows, and how could I NOT be into that?