A programmer's view of the Universe, part 1: The fish
steve-yegge.blogspot.com
steve-yegge.blogspot.com
Socrates once said: the unexamined life is not worth living. I believe in that statement. Tracing out that vine is part of what makes life worth living. But what if the tracing of the vine is ultimately pointless, because it only points to the inescapability of death? Are then the blissful masses who don't examine anything better off?
I don't think so. I'd rather die with my eyes open, having traced out the vine and made sure there's really no way out.
I'm not saying I didn't like the article. I did: it's the first Yegge I've actually cared to read in its entirety. But people, particularly people who aren't word people, tend to attribute superlatives to things that they like, and the word "literature" in particular is one that bugs me.
This was a good story, absolutely. It was heartfelt and sincere. But that's only a part of what makes good writing good. Literature is about the art of crafting words, of putting them together in ways that are aesthetically pleasing. There are people who can write great yarns who aren't writing literature. And this blog post, while it's very good for a blog post, isn't literature.
Which isn't to say it's not worth reading! Some people assume that literary merit is all that makes writing worthwhile; those people miss out on a lot of things that are beautiful and worth reading, just for the manner of the prose. I don't think that's true, and I agree with you with everything else you said. Just... don't assign attributes to a thing needlessly. It's like people that listen to a rap song and praise its harmonies. There are other ways to compliment a piece of writing.
Excuse me if this was unwarranted with your writing. I'm hoping this didn't come across entirely as somebody's being a dick needlessly. It's just something little that sets me off, and it provoked my writing something this time.
'Literature' is not a superlative.
But I use literature as a very specific phrase. I don't hold it to encompass all of writing. I use it to define a very particular branch of writing: the sort of writing that has an emphasis on language. However, I don't dismiss things that I don't call literature, either, and I don't hold literature necessarily on a level above everything else, either. For instance: I think that the Narnia series is better-written than Harry Potter, and that it's a more literary series. However, I think that Harry Potter is a better story, and I think that it has more about it that interests me than Narnia. I think the characters are more interesting, the arc of the story is more powerful, and I think that Rowling singlehandedly changed the face of the "children's literature" genre. If I were to pick which of the two series to keep and cherish for the rest of time, I'd go for Harry Potter.
So, as I said. Take what I said precisely for what I said. I'm not dismissing Yegge's article. I'm just saying that I take the term "literature" to define writing that is memorable for its aesthetic. Steve Yegge is an interesting writer, and at times he's compelling, but he is not particularly good with using the English language. He isn't bad, he just isn't good.
Ah, see, this is where we diverge. I too am a wordsmith, but to me, literature is defined by what it is that it leads the reader to. A fantastically written piece of poetry that has no deeper meaning is, to me, not literature. A piece of vogon poetry with a deeper meaning is also not literature, mind you - there has to be some basic level of craft. In either case, I consider the meaning to be more important than the form.
Amateurish as it might be, this piece had a Truth to tell, and to me, that makes it literature. Your point of view is just as valid as mine, so I think we'll just have to agree to disagree :-)
You think Narnia was better written than Harry Potter. That is cool, and you are entitled to have your own asshole. What makes your opinion any better than anyone else's? What gives you the credentials to define the word "literature"?
If you want to say you didn't like Yegge's work, that's cool, if you want to say you don't think it is literature, that's cool too. But to say no one else is allowed to consider it literature .. that is not cool at all.
It's possible to determine aesthetic quality, but no measure is by any means accurate. However, aesthetic is absolutely present. The easiest way is to determine how things sound when spoken aloud. There's no "formula" to it. It's entirely a matter of personal taste. However, Steve Yegge is not somebody who writes for the sound of his language. He writes to express ideas. Is it worth reading him? Yes. Does his writing have aesthetic merit? No, and he doesn't care, and swombat probably doesn't either. As I first said: I didn't post that to try and be a writing nazi. It was just something stewing in my mind, and I wrote it down as a response to something small that swombat wrote. I upvoted both swombat and the story itself: this was not meant to be an assault on either.
If you don't think there's a such thing as aesthetic in writing: read Joyce. Read Nabakov. Absolutely read Beckett. All three are writers with immediately identifiable styles, and each one certainly has a powerful aesthetic about his writing. "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins." There's a coupling of ideas (light/fire, life/loins). There's the name Lolita itself, which Nabakov expands himself in the story's opening paragraph. It flows. It spikes in the beginning, stretches out in the second and third phrases. These are all things that you can discuss. Compare that to "I write a column for computer programmers called "Stevey's Blog Rants." The second is informative without any styling whatsoever. And there's nothing wrong with that. It just isn't literature.
Narnia almost certainly is better written than Harry Potter. Don't take my word for it: read both. Narnia focuses on its language much more than Harry Potter. That's not saying Rowling writes without meaning: I wrote a minor dissertation about the first line in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone once, because I thought it was interesting and because I like picking things apart. Harry Potter has moments where it sounds beautiful, but those moments are few and far between, and Rowling does resort to clichés rather often. That doesn't make Harry Potter bad: I think that it defined a generation, my generation, and that the final 200 pages of the final book move me like very few things in writing do - that despite its lack of emphasis on beautiful language.
My credentials? I write. I've written since the sixth grade. I've gone to programs where I learn how to write. As such, I've developed informed opinions on things. My opinions are better than many people's opinions, because I've taken time to think about what I mean when I say things about literature. Most people don't think about how they define the term. I do. Therefore, I already know what I think about this.
I'm certain other people have other opinions, but they haven't responded yet. Why would you call Yegge's article literature, if you do? We could talk about that, and chances are both of us would learn something new in the process. I don't want to dictate literature and its definition: I only wanted to start a discussion.
If this goes on, I promise to be down-to-earth, and to never once mention Derrida or deconstructionism.
i'm sorry but to me what you are doing is very much like trying to measure program quality by counting lines of code. it's like you spent all these years trying to understand the details of writing you have gotten stuck in one mindset and don't realize that there are many other ways to see the world, there are many others forms of beauty out there.
For example Hemingway's famous six word short "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."
My standard for literature: does it touch your heart? Yes? It is art.
[tl;dr]
Of course there are other forms of beauty. Do you not read the statements I've made? Reread what I said in response to you, regarding Harry Potter versus Narnia. I'm pretty sure I said specifically that I liked Harry Potter more, and considered it a more valuable story, despite its not being as well-written as Narnia. I think that some people were masters of aesthetic, but never learned how to tell a good story: for that reason, I dislike Steinbeck quite a lot. I think the opposite can be the case.
My statement, as I've already clarified, was made against the use of the phrase "literature" alone. I use the word "literature" to describe writing that has aesthetic merit. When I read It, I call it a damn good story. I would not call It literary because Steven King is not a literary writer. He is literate, but not literary. He is a good writer who excels in substance and falters in style. I'm over-describing this, I think, but that's because my more concise explanation seemingly had no effect.
Another example: I think Isaac Asimov wrote damn good stories. I think that he was a master of logic, and that he wrote some of the best intellectual fiction I've ever read. I don't call his writing literature. I call it fiction. If somebody said in front of me that Asimove was a cornerstone of literature, I'd tell them that I disagreed, and explained why. I think he's a valuable part of the history of fiction. I think he's a masterful storyteller. If I were to make a list of writers to recommend to others, or even to history, I'd ditch both Hemingway and Faulkner and put Asimov on instead, though I'd admit that's not a popular opinion. However, I would not call him literature.
Whether something touches you or not doesn't make something literature. It doesn't make art, either. There's an art to being capable of drawing emotions, and that is an art that makes some writers memorable. However, you can draw emotion without any finesse whatsoever: witness Nick Sparks and his movie adaptations. People openly weep at The Notebook. That doesn't make it a well-crafted movie. I wouldn't call it an important movie in terms of cinema, in the same way that I'd say the novel is not an important piece of literature. If somebody asked me how to write a tearjerker, though, I'd point them there before I'd point them to Citizen Kane or Ulysses, though I'd probably point them to something like To Kill A Mockingbird first. (It should be noted that To Kill A Mockingbird is expertly written, tells a compelling story, and manages to draw tears all at once. These three things require separate skills and Harper Lee had all of them. Do you understand what I'm trying to say yet?)
[/tl;dr]
You can't ignore the connotations and meanings of the words that you choose. (Well, you can, and clearly you are, but you shouldn't.) There is a difference between being able to tell a story and being able to craft a good sentence. There's a difference between both and being able to draw emotion. The three are not linked immutably, though many good writers absolutely could do all three.
I'm not ignoring beauty. I'm not stuck in a mindset. I'm just particular about the words I use. Call it the mark of a writer. I posted, I will say yet again, because I thought it was worth a side discussion on what constitutes literature. I will say yet again that I liked Steve Yegge's post. It was an article that was worth reading. That doesn't make it well-written. That doesn't make it literature. It makes it, plain and simple, a good article. I don't object to people who like it because of that; I object to people who use the very specific term "literature" to describe the more general idea of "good writing."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Versification
It's about poetry, but all of the devices of poetry, including meter, are useful in prose.
This is one of those arguments that can't be won outright, but that doesn't mean some opinions aren't better (better reasoned, better informed) than others.
FWIW, I love Yegge's essays, but they ain't literature. They're too careless and breezy on any number of vectors -- more like a better than usual newspaper feature article. You know, something about the local Pumpkin Festival or whatever.
Finally a story that stays focused and actually entertains the reader from beginning to end. Makes me wonder if he actually spent some time editing this one instead of just spewing it out in his usual stream of conscienceless style.
No complaints, damn fine writing, I actually felt for the poor fish! Best post I've seen from him.
I felt that way when I first started reading his stuff, but now it's kind of a relaxing thing. The writing style just pulls you through, and at the end you feel like you've learned something of significance. It is a nice break from the more hectic style of reading I do online. At least, that was my experience after reading his post on the properties pattern.
The problem of the fish, or at least the persona he projected on it, is not that it was humbled by its own limited ability to understand. It was precisely the opposite: the world was too limited for its apparently oversized ability to understand.
I can't wait to see those "ramifications for the way we think about things today".
While I can't speak for all programmers, I must admit that I have a very high demand for adventure -- or at least routinely changing circumstances. I don't like to be "safe" or "secure" and I don't like starting adventures that I know will end. Perhaps that's why programming appeals to me so much; no matter how much I learn or try there will always be more. There's no way for a person to "master programming" in general because there are just way too many adventures out there to ever finish them all.
Of course, the ultimate adventure that will end is life itself. Then again, I guess that one is supposed to end. Otherwise we'd never have a reason to start truly living in the first place.
Grab a piece of printer paper. It's blank; nothing there. Grab a pencil; add some contrast. Now you're onto something.
Then again, you could have a completely different opinion on the matter. I wish you would have explained it :)
Do you really think this is true, or did you write it because it sounds good?
Life is about self-awareness, not about death. Would your life really change if you couldn't die? Mine wouldn't... although I would probably jump out of my window to get downstairs instead of waiting for the elevator. Death is an implementation bug, not a defining characteristic of life.
Pain is not necessary to understand pleasure. I can enjoy things without thinking about pain to counter it. (Again, pain is just an implementation bug. You can break your body if you are not careful, and pain is your body's way of getting your brain to stop breaking it.)
Finally, I don't look to others to define myself. Other people are nice to have around, but not for the reasons you list.
I don't want to be cynical, but I think your world view is misguided.
How, pray-tell, do you know how your life would change if we couldn't die? It's not something you'll ever be able to experience. Hell, as humans we can't even comprehend infinity. That being said, I'd argue that "life" would change a lot if it were no longer actually "a life." Would you plan to jump out of that window to get downstairs to go to work or whatever for the rest of eternity? How many centuries could you live until it just became... meaningless?
Of course pain is simply "your body's way of getting your brain to stop breaking it" (or something similarly boring, at least). I'm not arguing that there's some deep philosophical reason that pain exists. I'm simply arguing that if you had never experienced pain (physical, emotional, or otherwise) you wouldn't know real pleasure either because you couldn't define it. Logically, you'd have to be happy all the time if you could not experience sadness, but you wouldn't know what happiness was because you never experienced anything else. I suppose you could be truly neutral, but that's the same thing as feeling nothing which, consequently, is what happiness would feel like if it's all you could experience. I'm not saying you need to consciously remember a time you got punched in the face in order to enjoy sex or something asinine like that.
Finally, it's not about looking to others to define you. It's simply about realizing that your "being" or whatever you wish to call it is based entirely on context and circumstance. For instance, if I hadn't read your comment, you wouldn't exist to me. We've never spoken before, I don't know you, etc. Luckily for your psyche, you have friends and family and lots of other people/things to define your existence. If you didn't, well, the fact that you are physically here wouldn't really matter much at the end of the day. Of course you wouldn't just disappear off the face of the earth, but for all intents and purposes you wouldn't exist.
But I don't think it follows that all types of happiness and pleasure would cease to be. Some things might be inherently pleasurable, or rather are pleasurable just because of the qualia (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/) of such experiences, and not because of a reference to a prior pain. Orgasms. The taste of a delicious meal. Etc, etc.
Lastly, the absence of pain and death wouldn't necessarily mean that all our goals would be attained - there could still be room for struggle and therefore satisfaction. For example, I don't doubt that if someone with a lot of intellectual curiosity like Aristotle or Isaac Newton or Einstein were immortal and still alive today, they would still be able to find plenty of interesting challenges and probably wouldn't be bored of life yet. For the curious among us, as long as there is the unknown there will always be challenge and there will always be something interesting to do...and in the end, who knows if the unknown is even really finite?
Some things might be inherently pleasurable, or rather are pleasurable just because of the qualia
I completely agree! However (and perhaps I misrepresented my own view here by making things too simplified and black/white for the sake of comprehension) you still have contrast. For instance, an orgasm would likely always be more pleasurable than eating a piece of toast, regardless of whether or not you could experience any sort of displeasure. My argument was more of, "If an orgasm is 10/10 on the pleasure scale and everything felt like an orgasm, it's the same as being 0/0 because there is no longer a scale." Of course the counter-argument here (not much of an argument really) is "Everything would just feel awesome!" Unfortunately, that assumption is made from within the context of a life that does have a scale, so it's meaningless.
Since I can't rightly say that the unknown is finite as I have no idea, I won't argue that eventually Einstein would become so bored that he wished to die. However, I stick by my opinion that if life where eternal it would most certainly redefine the idea of life as we know it and would likely ultimately dilute the experience. To visit the orgasm analogy again, I think life is sort of like one -- a very brief period of heightened pleasure, awareness, etc. If you remove the brevity from it, you eventually remove the pleasure.
I think most people would agree that life is about the moments. The orgasms, the successful companies, the broken hearts. We define our lives based on these moments, we don't define them based on the dull in-between; eating breakfast, taking out the garbage, brushing our teeth. Many of us, I think, strive to fill our lives with as many positive moments as we can mostly because (consciously or otherwise) we realize that we have only so many moments to make before there's simply no time life to make them. If you could live forever, would you honestly work so hard all the days of your long life to make those moments? Or would the lack of urgency dilute your desire for that? Even cause you to eventually lose that desire entirely?
Hell, I don't know. I'm just of the opinion that it would.
However, this leaves us with the problem that not only would there be no change in the intensity of pleasure to actually signify the difference between normal and orgasms (just for example), but absolute pleasure, being the one and only feeling, would become outrageously normal.
Which leads back to life without death. The majority of people (every single person I've ever met) have serious issues with the concept of death. Maybe they're not afraid of it, but we have created entire religions simply because not one of us can imagine being non-existant, and so we created the afterlife. However, the fact that we are is defined by the fact that there are many who aren't. The problem with this idea is not a single one of us can make a conclusion based on our behavior is there was no death, for it is impossible for us (or at least for me) to comprehend a world in which there actually is no end of life. The example given about these philosophers is true, I doubt the would be bored, however the hundreds/thousands/however many years they would have been alive is no where near infinity. Without even a concept of death, life is no longer life, it simply IS. End of story. Our goals may very well be attained, but the fact that they would even be considered goals with no pleasure at attaining them and no pain at leaving them be is a bit of a mystery to me.
That's an unfalsifiable statement, I'm afraid.
... they don't know they're dead!
At the threshold I saw more than a thousand angels fallen from Heaven. Angrily they shouted: 'Who is this, who is not dead, yet passes through the kingdom of the dead?' ... Then they reined in their great disdain enough to say: 'Let him be gone, who has so boldly made his way into this kingdom. Let him retrace his reckless path alone -- let him see if he can, for you shall stay, you who have led him through this gloomy realm.'
Having said that, cichlids are a great choice if you are looking for intelligent freshwater aquarium fish. Many species of cichlids are very easy to breed in captivity (removing the need to harvest them from the wild) and they tend to be very hardy. I highly recommend Kribensis and convict cichlids.
I've got a lump in my throat right now.
And it is possible to use sans-serif well. Yegge just doesn't. And psychologically, that turns me off from his essays before I begin to read. I've got it in my mind that somebody with something to say will at least take the minimal time to ensure it looks good.
It might just be that if we are able to conceive something complex, we are able to abstract away and simplify it. It's just a matter of finding the right metaphors and abstractions.
Something whose existence cannot be observed or falsified doesn't 'exist' in any meaningful sense, but I suspect that there are things that exist, in a meaningful sense, even though they won't be noticed.
1. Great post. I hope Steve Yegge continues down this path (i.e. parts 2..n). I wonder if he's ever read Donald Knuth's "Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About."
2. I had a betta once. It lived in a 20-gallon tank with two goldfish. The tank was on top of a bookcase by a window, so they had plenty of interesting trees and birds to watch (not to mention the cat which no doubt terrorized for a few minutes each day). Eventually, the goldfish killed the betta. And then they killed each other.
http://www.fish-school.com/gallery.htm
I wonder how Steve's pet would have reacted to exploring a fish tube:
While not on the usual subject matter, this was a beautifully written piece that makes a point on multiple levels - and is probably appreciable by people outside of the "programmer / IT culture".
Bravo, Steve. I felt for that fish.
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--- seen on zombierobot.com
In fact, most of us live in a box, most of the time.
Sorry for bringing this up, but life begins, when, well, when it begins.
Neither Roe or Wade are pro death anymore. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norma_McCorvey
No you're not.