The Egg (2009) | Hacker News Reader

The Egg (2009)

galactanet.com

223 pointsTomte51 comments

Here's a fun "before he was famous" moment - Andy Weir did an AMA on Reddit pre-The Martian success where he talked about writing The Egg. Here he responds to a question about his other writing where he goes on to mention that he's disappointed that The Martian hasn't been successful.

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/zt1n6/i_am_andy_weir_...

"Thanks! I wrote The Egg in an evening but it took years to write The Martian. Sometimes I'm a little sad that The Martian wasn't anywhere near as popular, but I guess it's a niche readership. Hard sci-fi isn't for everyone."

That's great!

I think it says much that hard sci-fi isn’t popular to modern science and or the economy or government. Ie modern society lacks some sort of gee whiz goal on the horizon to push interest. Electric cars are cool, for instance, but they’re here and they’re not practical for apartment renters and distance drivers. Space discoveries are cool, but they take a long time to pull off and the results aren’t very compelling - with the exception of anything ET life related.

I feel like modern science may somehow be restricting or restricted from ground breaking, compelling discoveries.

Like, imagine if the world had a big-budget moonshot research project? Mining and colonizing asteroids, a space elevator, novel thruster technology, colonizing the seas even.

We went to the moon because we were afraid of Russian hegemony on Earth. Not sure that's "gee-whiz".

And yet it still serves as a common talking point for inspiration. People did go into the sciences in the past and day dream of all sorts of things because of the Apollo missions. The political realities of the Cold War helped fund the project...sort of like how the fight against terrorism helps fund projects to this day.

This seems like such an odd response to me. The Martian is as far as you can get from hard sci-fi?

It seems like Andy writes exactly for movies. Heavy on scene and technicality details, but very, very scant on quality dialogue and character development.

Hard sci-fi doesn't mean quality dialogue or character development, but an emphasis on scientific accuracy

I love stories like these. Reminds me of The Last Question by Isaac Asimov -- http://www.physics.princeton.edu/ph115/LQ.pdf

That's one of my all time favourite stories.

Great story! Thanks for sharing.

This is a great story.

It's been submitted to HN 18 times.

Also, it's written by Andy Weir, who wrote The Martian.

I loved The Martian, and I had never caught this on HN before.

Thank you to OP for reposting once again. That is a fantastic story. Really wonderful.

I'd never seen his site. I'll be sure to read more, now.

I had no idea it was written by him until now. I see it on HN usually once a year and every time it brings a smile to my face.

Elegant, simple and meaningful.

I don’t get much meaning from it. What do you take away from it?

Actually, it was written by me. I mean you.

Interesting. I check HN daily since its beginning, but I cannot remember reading The Egg.

Submitted vs. making front-page are two different things, so it looks like 2010 would of been the only other time it would of been there.

https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=galactanet.com

I'm pretty sure it was on the front page more often than that, probably as a link to another, secondary source. I've certainly seen it on the front page some time after 2010.

Update: An example is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7203095

Ah, interesting. Thanks for pointing that out!

Turns out that it's actually the same domain, and it also shows up in your list. I just didn't notice it (same as you, apparently ;) )

Ha, I now see it and realize I upvoted it as well... which is also why I think I missed it. The upvote arrows act as a bullet point and thus I think I skipped right over that one since it was missing.

I enjoy it each time I come back across it. :)

/thread

This reminded me of a physics theory in which all electrons are actually the same electron, going back and forth in time: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-electron_universe

even if it's a crazy idea, there's something attractive about a really simple, elegant answer to a complicated question.

"why are all electrons fundamentally the same"?

"because they're all the same electron."

(edit: oops, didn't realize I just quoted the wiki article until after I opened it)

It's not a theory so much as a metaphysical interpretation -- it's scientifically equivalent to the many-electron Universe.

It isn't if we can't find the electrons going backwards, which we generally can't. Nowhere near enough positrons in the right places. I consider it a fun example of the sort of thing that modern physicists should be familiar with, so it's useful both historically and for didactic purposes, but as a conjecture it appears to be simply false.

Sometimes I wish I knew some in-depth physics, take a bunch of LSD, and see what hidden truths would emerge... Does that happen? A bunch of scientists should really take some psychedelics together.

No, it could be disproven. Take a high-energy gamma ray, and have it undergo pair production, creating an electron and a positron. Capture both in the same Penning trap, then let them annihilate.

This would result in a loop that is disconnected from any other electrons, showing that the electron/positron in the loop is distinct from other electrons.

What happens when you destroy one?

Have loved this story since the first time that I read it several years ago. Until today I never knew that it was written by Andy Weir of The Martian fame.

A great story. It's similar in a lot of ways to how people believe that Buddhas (according to Theravada Buddhism, many, many Buddhas live among us and almost all of us will become one) fulfill his path to enlightenment this way--reincarnation after another, absorbing all experiences along the way until he is ready to become the Enlightened one.

Disclaimer: I was born Buddhist, but no longer. But I still admire a few aspects of Theravada Buddhism.

Agreed. And the story was well-written. It takes time for people to appreciate that their mother and father is them as well.

> Eluding is the invariable game. The typical act of eluding, the fatal evasion that constitutes the third theme of this essay, is hope. Hope of another life one must “deserve” or trickery of those who live not for life itself but for some great idea that will transcend it, refine it, give it a meaning, and betray it.

The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus

The submitted story really rubs me the wrong way. It's just fatalism with a bit of make-up. It's saying that should let go of your lack of growth as an individual, because you can just pretend you don't exist in the grand scheme of things, and defer to your relationship to the universe and live vicariously through some bastardized concept of the universe growing as one. It's just an excuse for fully embracing fatalism. Sure, you walk away from this story with a tinge of positivity and a slight mandate to start treating others the way you want to be treated, but that's just a meaningless platitude, and it's just a red herring to distract you from the horrible message underneath.

I think the idea that we all share the same consciousness, but different memories, is called "open individualism" in philosophy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_individualism

This story was also the basis for the skits from Logic's album Everybody where Neil deGrasse Tyson plays the role of God.

Heh, I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought if you have reincarnation then why would time also be linear? You could be every living thing in a universe.

It's interesting to try to reconcile that on the one hand:

"Time, as you know it, only exists in your universe. Things are different where I come from"

And on the other hand, there is a clear passage of time implied here:

"This time around, you’ll be a Chinese peasant girl in 540 AD"

"You’re still growing. Once you’ve lived every human life throughout all time, you will have grown enough to be born"

This story seems to be suggesting that if the universe was a training program for a superbeing then we would be more incented to be moral. But as far as I know the universe isn't a training program for a superbeing, so I'm not sure what the moral is supposed to be. It's like an anti-allegory.

It's also assuming morality will be meaningful to such a superbeing.

Read this a while back and found it to be unique and thought provoking. I really enjoyed it, however my only issue with it was the part where you have to live every human life. It made me think of “The Species Problem.” Basically a God in the idea he portrays would have to live through the lives of every living being on earth.

I’m always interested in the positive reactions to this story. I think it’s quite good, but it also terrifies me. Living a hundred billion lives, many of them mindbendingly horrible, and getting mind wiped after each one, sounds like Hell.

I believe in past lives. You won't believe me, or you may think I'm delusional or very imaginative, but I remember some of my past lives.

One of my most vivid memories: I was a woman in some country in Africa. I lived in a hut which was some torn concrete fixed up with mud and a thatched roof. I had two sons-- one was about three, and the other was a baby. I don't know where my husband was in these memories, but I remember that i liked him-- like I was growing fond of him, because perhaps I wasn't sure before? I remember carrying the baby in my arms. He was my favorite (I had a bad feeling about the older boy). So I remember constantly looking into the baby's eyes to see if he still had sweetness. I don't remember their names and I don't remember the time period. Bad stuff happened and I died young and I don't know what happened to my boys.

I believe I only remember what's relevant to me in this life, and that souls aren't just reincarnated on Earth. I don't believe in karma, just life/soul lessons.

At least you're not in Naraka - for this incarnation, at least.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naraka_(Buddhism)

I think its kind of cool because if true you would basically derive the "golden rule" of most religions from first principles.

Treat others as you'd have them treat you because they are you.

That’s cool, but it’s uncool that it doesn’t seem to actually work, and I have to spend trillions of years living through the consequences without the ability to learn from my mistakes.

Yep, and you have no one to blame but yourself for all of it. That's the lesson.

Not much of a lesson if I can’t remember it.

Yes, eventually I will, but I’ll have to live trillions of years first.

Of course you don't remember it, that's part of the point. If you remembered it, you'd treat yourself better because you'd know it was you. The lesson is about how you behave when you don't know that.

After the second time, why would it matter?

It's interesting to learn where the intro to Logic's album Everybody came from.

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