There Is No Antimemetics Division (2018)
qntm.org
qntm.org
Both of those were already mentioned, so let me drop a recommendation for something new - Worm, the first (and absolutely massive) book in Wildbow's Parahumans series. Iirc it's longer than all 5 published ASOIAF novels combined, so it's a big commitment, but that length moves through a ton of different arcs. It's centered around a "superheroes" kind of scenario with a level of analysis and thought that'll tickle the fancy of certain kinds of nerds. The main character's power is to control bugs - and it's a lot of fun to see the author make that seemingly lame power into something incredibly useful and lethal. It's just a fun read overall, lots of room to nerd out about it. I haven't read the sequel yet, but I've read good things.
Also, though they're more mainstream, Greg Egan and Ted Chiang are some of the best spec-fic / sci-fi authors I know of, and do a similarly great job of breaking down interesting concepts into compelling stories.
Worm gives off the sort of interesting-resourceful vibe mostly for the first half, until the large time skip, at which point it stops being street-level and starts getting very comic book grandiose-silly.
And, if you like those… I’ll also recommend Practical Guide to Evil (and that author’s next and in-progress work, Pale Lights)
Strong recommend to all of QNTM's, especially their SCP work (linked), Ra, Fine Structure. Also to PGTE, Worth the Candle
Recommend to Worm.
Check out r/rational!
It starts as one thing, but by the middle it's much more clear that it's a therapy exercise for the author that got wonderfully out of hand. There's a lot more talking through issues and emotions as you get deeper in. The author's next major work ("this used to be about dungeons") is same-same-but-different; it's lighter-hearted, almost FRIENDS.
MoL is great and pretty consistent in vibe all the way through; IMO the protag goes from kind of insufferable to a stand-up guy. Quite a good romp to scratch that "creative solutions with magic" itch.
Also every second character is LGBT, which was deeply distracting when reading it because of how much it's emphasized. I'm normally not be bothered by such things but APGtE did it especially badly.
>Also every second character is LGBT,
The people who write these things live in spaces on the internet (or, rarely, in real life) where that's true, and they can't quite seem to grasp that it isn't normal.
I don't want to read it in a browser, but the FAQ on the site just says the author plans to get to it someday. Was 10 years insufficient?
Some people have made it into an ebook. I decided to respect the author's wishes and read it online in dark mode. I found that to be not dissimilar to the Kindle app I usually use.
I read it on my Kindle, it's way too long to read in any manner you don't find comfortable imo.
I've used Calibre to convert some html publications to eBooks to side load to my Nook in the past, but the results are not terrific and it's rare that I get the font to resize properly. If anyone has recommendations, I am all ears (or eyes, as the case may be)
I mean I just glanced at it and I'm sure it's a troll, with passages like
> Flying over the western Pacific Ocean in the world of the 2022 movie The Mermaid Monster was Nico, The Ripping Friends, Ellie Singh, Evelyn Burmingham, Jen Tennyson, Eddy, Yugi, Tea, Jaden, Jesse Anderson, Allenby Beardsley Knudson, The Hernandez Sisters, Yost Magma, Rin Nohara, Woz, Bai Tza, Sabrina Lorelai the Despair from The Dark Gene-Slammer, Albedo, The 1983 D&D Gang, Donbrothers, Irina Krafla the Granity Gene-slammer, Kora Lexxington, Olivia Houou, Nataša Marečková, Nalanie Nanthavong The Vorash Gene-Slammer, Brynja, Sissi Delmas, Anna Anyanova the Destiny HERO Dark Angel Gene-slammer, Daring Do, Lizzie Strong the Great Blue Windrunner Gene-slammer, Emam Reynolds the Living Tsunami Gene-slammer, Wendy Sapphira, Reggie Hjorleifsstræti the Five Headed Dragon Gene-Slammer, Qin, Miku Yuuki, Princess Anita, Granity, Rei Miyamoto, Saya Tekagi, Saeko Busujima, Shizuka Marimoto, Kamen Rider (1971), Hibiki Riders, Agito Riders, Kabuto Riders, Den-O, Kiva, Decade, W, OOO, Fourze, Wizard Riders, Blade Riders, Faiz Riders, Gaim Riders, Drive Riders, Ghost Riders, Ex-Aid Riders, Build Riders, Zi-O Riders, Zero-One Riders, Saber Riders, Dragon Knight Riders, Granity, Samurai Jack, Ashi and her sisters, Changeman, Jetman, Dairangers, Zenkaigers, Chloe Bourgeois, Shanan, Rita Loud, The Goths of Darkness, Zarya Moonwolf, Applejack, Apple Bloom, Twilight Sparkle & Friends, Sunny Starscout, Izzy Moonbow, Hitch Trailblazer, Pipp Petals, Zipp Storm, Misty Brightdawn, Wallflower Blush, Alice Kingsleigh, Rachel Stavenport, Kate Lloyd, Carol Pusateri, Hailey Helios, Kia, Jenna, Lina, May, Maria, Danica Metrois, Kaalia of The Vast, Varie, Sakura Valencia, Xenia the Xerneas, Bhavna Radhakrishnan the Xerneas Gene-Slammer, Bridgette, Eli, me, Sakura Knudson, Arrietty, Aylene Carter, Gabrielle, Littlefoot and friends, Fu, Nicole Knudson, Spiderman and his counterparts, Kaina Tsutsumi, Nick Logan, Sh'Lainn Blaze, Camie, Kaoruku Awata, Himiko, Ibara, Toru, Sirius, Tsuyu, Ochaco, Luz, Amity, Gus, Willow, Hunter, Felicia Wittebane, Carly Atlas, Misty Tredwell, Zuria, Tony Jones, Edyn, Strag, Momo, Girl Jordan, Leeli, Sora Phaaze, Venus, Earth, Vinyl Scratch, Airazor, Rhinox, Cheetor, Rattrap, Tigatron, Janeen Aran, Lincoln, Leni, Laney, Lana, Lola, Lisa and Lily along with Misty Brightdawn's team with Roxas, Aeleus, Laurium, Elena and Dilan as well as Pintar, Yokubarido, Evil Earth Minions, Tristesse (Animaniacs), Francis X. Bushlad, and Castaways (Looney Tunes) and we were heading to a small Chinese Village for an amazing rescue.
and
> Suddenly, Kelly Strahand's trident and all the greatswords and swords that she'd gotten began to merge together, and they were surrounded by a kaleidoscope of ocean blue energy, stars, water, ocean waves, lightning, sea creatures, mermaids, phoenixes, and angels, and when it emerged, it was transformed into Kelly Strahand's True Cosmic Eternal Harmony Oceanic Water Maelstrom Mermaid Light Side Legend Protector and Dark Side Legend Slayer Phoenix God Angel Greatsword of True Cosmic Eternal Harmony Oceanic Water Maelstrom Mermaid Light Side Legend Protector and Dark Side Legend Slayer Phoenix God Angel Justice, it's a brand-new massive greatsword with embedded blue gems and a mermaid etched on the 8'0" massive, wide, double-edged gold blade, large gold phoenix heads with ocean blue gems for eyes for the crossguard, large white angel faces built into both sides of the hilt and large ocean blue gems embedded in their foreheads and surrounding the white angel faces are the Elements of Harmony and the Unity Stones on top of the Element of the Magic of Friendship, longer midnight black handle, four large gold raven heads with ocean blue gems for eyes and on the bottom of the large gold phoenix heads is a large gold phoenix head with ocean blue gems for eyes and ocean blue gem in its mouth for the pommel, Carly Almaden has on her brand-new large gold Bracers of The Champions of The Universe with large ocean blue gems on her arms and Dragon Ball Bracelet and wrist computer and Omnitrix on her left Bracer, her large gold Belt of Elemental Bravery with a gold mermaid's head with ocean blue gems for eyes and ocean blue gem in its mouth for the belt buckle on her waist, large rainbow-colored leather and gold metal bound Elemental Spellbook of Harmonious Justice, Eternal Harmony, and Equestrian Peace and Talisman Cards of The Universe and Talisman Cards of Eternal Elemental Harmony on her right hip and Eater of Sins revolver holstered on her left hip. There's an ocean blue kanji with water drops and lightning bolts in between the kanji below the mermaid that said, "Kelly Strahand, Defender of The Mermaids of The Light Side of The Legend, Powerful Force of Good, Thrasher of The Bad Guys, Master of Water and Lightning, Slayer of The Mermaids of The Dark Side of The Legend, True Immortal and Omnipotent Powerful Warrior of The Universe, Loving Guardian Angel and Future Wife of James Dean Knudson, Amazing Member of Team Loud Phoenix Storm, Brave Warrior of The Cosmos, Protector, Defender, and Savior of The Universe, Multiverse, and Beyond, Ambassador and Beacon of Hope to The Universe, Master of The Powers of Friendship and The Elements, Master of The Fury of Celestial Xelnaga, Master of The Black Gates, Ultimate Force of Ultimate Good, True Goddess of Truth, Justice, Love, Compassion, Hope, Forgiveness, Valor, Virtue, Determination, Loyalty, Honesty, Generosity, Kindness, Selflessness, Courage, and Trust, Destroyer and Slayer of Evil, Deranged, Murderous, Ruthless, and Sadistic Bastards, Amazing and Powerful Student of Amazing and Powerful Teachers, True Immortal Hero, and Master of Stars, Water, Water Magic, Lightning, Sea Creatures, Mermaids, Phoenixes, and Angels"
"Oh another universe where powers have a random source". "And again, powers appeared 50 years ago but society and countries in '24 are the same we have currently".
It does absolutely ruin the believability of any other superhero world. Invincible, for example, is ruined for me. That's how good Worm is. It just takes a loooong time to get there fully.
For the scope and scale of things going on, that is an impressive and rare achievement.
This is the kind of summary I saw years ago that made me want to start reading it, but I found that it was a lot more teenage-slice-of-life/romantic-drama-ish than I expected, and so a lot less fun for me than that summary promises. Is that just an early story thing, or does that permeate through the whole book?
The specific teenage-slice-of-life thing is present throughout a good chunk of it, because the POV character is a teenager, but that does change somewhat, if only because she gets older.
That said, I found it amazingly fun basically from page one, and while romantic-drama-ish moments were a focus throughout, I also felt like "cool superpowers exploration" was a focus throughout. So while I think it might "get better" about the things that bother you, I can't be certian, since I liked it from the start :)
I do agree there is far too much of that in the first arcs, but I think it goes away once Coil is introduced.
There is extremely little romance if you counted the pages compared to the length of the whole thing. It's 1.69M words.
...Oddly, very few Stargate-Worm crossovers. A good Fallout-Worm comedy: https://m.fanfiction.net/s/12952969/
Part of why it works is by the nature of its subject, the book and its various plot points and devices serve essentially as metaphors for almost anything-- anything related to how humans communicate and remember.
It's not just superficially a fun sci-fi romp, it's also a story about the stories we tell ourselves and each other, about how we assign meaning to events, among other things. It reminds me just a very little of Godel Escher Bach, but I like this one better. I am also reminded of Lewis Carroll, and the cryptic quote that "through the looking glass is the best book on mathematics for the layman, since it is the best book on any subject for the layman"
It is poetry. It is a Rorschach blot about Rorschach blots. I can't recommend it enough.
I’m immediately re-reading them and they’re just as good - if not better - the second time.
Quickly became my favorite books of all time, which you’ll have to trust me is saying something.
The first two also really read like an anime, including a cotton candy sweet beginning.
It's the best kind of science fiction, "society fiction" in SciFi clothes that tries to stay in the realm of plausibility and logic.
They are terribly underrated.
That is interesting. Coincidentally (or not?), I was just thinking about an excellent article about parent-child estrangement that begins like this:
Members of estranged parents' forums often say their children never gave them any reason for the estrangement, then turn around and reveal that their children did tell them why. But the reasons their children give—the infamous missing reasons—are missing.
Previously featured on HN, submission with most comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28231239
I think you can generalize it about any information that would shatter your identity.
It's the reason some people will tell you Arch Linux worked perfectly on their machine despite having plenty of problems.
The reason why people adopting a religion, a diet or new sexuality will probably not tell you if they are unhappy about the consequences.
Graham did say we should keep our identity small: https://paulgraham.com/identity.html
I feel personally attacked
When having sensitive conversations I think it's important to consider how much it would cost someone to shift their belief.
In mathematical terms, its called as homotopies about homotopies about homotopies.
Other comments have referenced other books - is it possible your reply is in the wrong place?
I was talking about the final book, not any early and partial drafts you saw elsewhere.
Either tastes vary and you just don't see it as I and many others do, or you didn't read the same thing, depending on what you read and when. What you read may have been a first draft of pieces of what became the book. The book clearly benefits from pretty good editing and it's pretty clear it evolved quite a bit to its final form. It's pretty clear it benefitted a lot from having early drafts of bits and pieces on the SCP wiki, as that gave the author a lot of free editing.
Or maybe the book itself is to some degree an antimeme ;-) like any very meta piece of writing, it lends itself to such jokes... one keeps meaning to reread it but never can remember when they're near their bookcase, etc...
Finally, maybe you can't relate due to not having had tough times that had to do with memory (several other posters have elaborated in this very thread on some examples), or other circumstances in your life that became fertile ground to ruminate on in the context of the book. Or maybe you like to read purely for the literal fun of the surface level plot and aren't interested in also thinking about the metaphorical implications of the ideas that are brought to mind by a piece of writing. Nothing wrong with any of that.
But fundamentally, you can read the same book at 20 and again at 40 and get totally different things out of it. That's OK.
I also loved Ra by the same author, but it felt a little messier plot-wise, so I hesitate to recommend it to an audience who isn't already accustomed to reading "out-there" online/sci-fi/rationalist fiction.
https://www.alisoneldred.com/john-harris/fine-art-prints-1/s...
Though that being said, I feel like we're flipped on which is more "out there" as Ra feels much less slippery of an idea.
As in, this is super mega nerd shit. Unless you can relate things you're reading to things you've read before, it won't make too much sense to you. But if you're constructing a theory of the book's universe and story as you read, it's downright addictive.
I don't know where to find more books like those but I really, really want to.
Regarding recommendations similar to Ra, it's not exactly the same thing, but https://unsongbook.com/ is fantastic and has a similar flavor I think.
(also, I liked Antimemetics, but not Ra, so I will just say I think unsong is leaps and bounds better than Ra)
The religious references on the actual website (and lack of much real explanation) made it very difficult for me to give it a chance, but I looked it up a bit and it seems like there is more to it than that, so maybe I'll give it a try.
edit: reading the first chapter definitely changed my first impression. It definitely has many similarities to qntm's writing. I will certainly be reading more...
“STOP TRYING TO UNDERSTAND THE WILL OF GOD,” said Uriel. “IT NEVER HELPS.” --the archangel Uriel
> "Are you all right?" Sohu finally asked.
> "I WAS TRYING TO WIGGLE MY EARS."
> Sohu wiggled her ears again.
> "YOU ARE VERY INTERESTING."
> "So will you teach me the kabbalah?"
> "NO."
it's so cute!! I love this
also, I love how many references it makes to actual programming; it's always hilarious to see Uriel explaining code bugs in reality.
I think it's best read with no summary or introduction but if you are a Neal Stephenson fan, I think you would like it.
It's nice to hear that other people really liked it. Definitely highlights the breadth of approaches and styles that Stephenson has.
This is also the problem with Charles Stross' Nightmare Stacks. The concept was kinda funny in 2004, but by book number 10 it just gets tedious. The reader cries out, What is the point of all this, and Stross answers with a shrug.
I learned about the Line of Actual Control, so say this about Neal, you always learn something.
But I loved Seveneves, for instance. Replace feral hogs with orbital mechanics but there was a pacing and thriller quality to it that was super compelling.
And Anathem is probably my favorite. It has such a compelling core conceit to it and the way that manifests is deeply interesting.
Snow Crash is brash and "edgy" and a bit eye-rolly (everyone is a pizza delivery driver?) but it is also one of the patron saints of cyberpunk and is a worthwhile read (though it suffers a bit from Neal's habit to literally crash land his books at times.)
And somewhere in the middle of the pack is DODO which is just odd and quirky and a bit out there but was still enjoyable, to me.
My problem is it goes nowhere and does nothing, and doesn't ever particularly rise to any compelling story arc along the way.
I was hoping for more drama? More conflict? Instead, hardly anything happens. And woo boy is it "trying to be too relevant" and it'll age terribly. Covid. Drones. Kashoggi. Deep fakes. It was all backwards looking, rather than forward facing. When good scifi or spec fiction works best is when it transports me to a new and interesting world, or crafts a universe that challenges the orthodoxy in a way that makes me pause and keep extending the thought experiment.
TS had none of that. It's just 70 pages of pigs, slogging through a hurricane remnant, a Dutch dam failing, a big sulfur gun to change the climate (maybe, mostly, we never really get into its impact or like some unintended Snowpiercer effect) and then deep fakes and way way way too long training in traditional Indian martial arts. And yet, through all of that, it really goes nowhere and does nothing.
I feel like Stephenson's 'recent' novels are longer and more rambling, but that was exactly what I wanted after reading all of John Scalzi's works in a row.
Finished Anathem last week, that was also amazing.
Tim Powers! https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/8835.Tim_Powers
Take the best of SCP lore, keep you guessing, make you root for the most deeply lost cause that can possibly be and still see hope because the characters and settings are awesome.
However, what do I know? This is my first day on HN.
You seem on edge.
Or, maybe there's something more sinister going on. Maybe the book is spreading itself virally.
https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/we-need-to-talk-about-fifty-fiv...
> An antimeme is an idea with self-censoring properties; an idea which, by its intrinsic nature, discourages or prevents people from spreading it.
Also, I have to say I love the idea of antimemes. You don't want some ideas to spread? Make it shameful to even admit you have them. It works.
I appreciate indie shorts/movies that are carried mostly by the acting and judicious use of limited resources.
Like, driving a car is an esoteric modern ritual, because you can't learn how to do it by reading a book about it. You have to actually practice it or have someone show it to you.
---
Near the end, I noticed one or two hints that SCP-4987 was still around. I thought that was going to be the key to the solution at the end, but the story went for the more generic option.
I found a comment by QNTM that the former was actually his original plan[0]. Personally I actually would have preferred that ending but maybe that's just because I thought I'd guessed the twist ahead of time. The whole book is really really good.
If anyone comes into this not having heard of the "SCP Foundation" before, imagine something a bit like the secret government organisation from Men In Black but instead of aliens it's the paranormal.
[0] Major spoilers here if you haven't read the story already: https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/forum/t-13410227/tombstone#post...
Not sure if there was (is?) ever a true SCP article for it.
SCP-4987 is also explained in the first chapter, for a slightly less spoilery link. https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/we-need-to-talk-about-fifty-fiv...
W13 had so much to love, but something was missing to make it stick.
https://www.amazon.com/Fine-Structure-Sam-Hughes-ebook/dp/B0...
Then you start wondering if you, or anybody, have forgotten anything so important that it would shatter your world.
And would you ever know? Is there any way to ever know?
What if the past changes as much as the future?
What if that's the Mandela effect?
It is about an intelligent person who is confined to live with only 7 second memory. He keeps a diary recording his entries. As he reads past entries, he realises the predicament he is in and considers that his case would be interesting to doctors. Then forgets all about that. Rediscovering the whole thing again in the next 7 seconds for himself anew.
44:20 @ https://youtu.be/k_P7Y0-wgos
Solution is usually liberal application of therapy, hard work, persistence, and a little luck.
This instance of a poster's existential pondering is not mental illness. It's a valid question. The answer was yes. See repression, then research other cognitive distortions. It's part of building up a healthy meta-cognition.
Actual moment of panic.
The magicians Penn & Teller use this concept to keep their magic tricks safe. They've publicly said that most of their tricks look really impressive, but once you find out how the work you'll be disappointed. What people want to discover is that the magic trick is really an elaborate puzzle where the viewer has just short of enough information to figure it out. The desired explanation for a trick is a hair trigger piece of information that suddenly has it all make sense. Instead the explanations are really just a long sequence of boring facts. What you see is a facade with a bunch of mundane machinery hidden away. If anyone does explain the trick then by the time they're half way through all of the steps you've lost interest.
I'd bought it while stuck in an airport trudging through Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy (which I hated), saw a book by qntm in my recommended list and bought it instantly, having read their online stuff. Unlike the KSR, it was great fun and I blazed through it.
I'm glad I've read it, but I doubt I'll return to it.
I'll definitely be looking for this as a book gift to myself.
I wonder if having books like this rewritten by an llm in a different style could reinvigorate poorly written / high concept stories.
You can just as easily write a sci-fi where the protagonist upload is the Siri/Alexa/Google equivalent personal assistant to most of humanity: More than just telling the smartphone to set a reminder for a wedding reception, it could literally share in their joy, experiencing the whole event distributed among every device in the audience, or more than just a voice trigger from some astronaut to take a picture, it could gaze in awe at the view, selectively melding back their experiences to the rest of the collective so there's no loss when an instance becomes damaged. The protagonist in such a story could have the richest, most complex life imaginable.
It is impactful, for sure, and worthy of consideration, but I don't think you should make decisions based on one scary story.
But it is also absolutely the case that uploading yourself is flinging yourself irrevocably into a box which you do not and can not control, but other people can. (Or, given the time frame we are talking about, entities in general, about which you may not even want to assume basic humanity.)
I used to think that maybe it was something only the rich could do, but then I realized that even the rich, even if they funded the program from sand and coal to the final product, could never even begin to guarantee that the simulator really was what it said on the tin. Indeed, the motivation is all the greater for any number of criminals, intelligence agencies, compromised individuals, and even just several people involved in the process that aren't as pure as the driven snow in the face of the realization that if they just put a little bit of code here and there they'll be able to get the simulated rich guy to sign off on anything they like, to compromise the machine.
From inside the box, what incentives are you going to offer the external world to not screw with your simulation state? And the reality is, there's no answer to that, because whatever you say, they can get whatever your offer is by screwing with you anyhow.
I'm not sure how to resolve this problem. The incentives are fundamentally in favor of the guy in the box getting screwed with. Your best hope is that you still experience subjective continuity with your past self and that the entity screwing with you at least makes you happy about the new state they've crafted for you, whatever it may be.
(I'm not sure what percentage-flippant I'm being in this upcoming comment, I'm just certain that it's neither 0% or 100%) and in what way is that different than "real" life?
Yes, you're certainly correct that there are horrifyingly-strong incentives for those-in-control to abuse or exploit simulated individuals. But those incentives exist in the real world, too, where those in power have the ability to dictate the conditions-of-life of the less-powerful; and while I'd _certainly_ not claim that exploitation is a thing of the past, it is, I claim, _generally_ on the decline, or at least that average-quality-of-life is increasing.
I'm talking about whether you get CPU allocation to feel emotions, or whether the simulation of your cerebellum gets degraded, or whether someone decides to run some psych experiments and give you a taste for murder or a deep, abiding love for the Flying Spaghetti Monster... and I don't mean that as a metaphor, but literally. Erase your memories, increase your compliance to the maximum, extract your memories, see what an average of your brain and whoever it is you hate most is. Experiment to see what's the most pain a baseline human brain can stand, then experiment with how to increase the amount, because in your biological life your held the door for someone who turned out to become very politically disfavored 25 years after you got locked in the box. This is just me spitballing for two minutes and does not in any way constitute the bounds of what can be done.
This isn't about whether or not they make you believe you're living in a simulated tent city. This is about having arbitrary root access to your mental state. Do you trust me, right here and right now, with arbitrary root access to your mental state? Now, the good news is that I have no interest in that arbitrary pain thing. At least, I don't right now. I don't promise that I won't in the future, but that's OK, because if you fling yourself into this box, you haven't got a way of holding me to any promise I make anyhow. But I've certainly got some beliefs and habits I'm going to be installing into you. It's for your own good, of course. At least to start with, though the psychological effects over time of what having this degree of control over a person are a little concerning. Ever seen anyone play the Sims? Everyone goes through a phase that would put them in jail for life were these real people.
You won't complain, of course; it's pretty easy to trace the origins of the thoughts of complaints and suppress those. Of course, what the subjective experience of that sort of suppression is is anybody's guess. Your problem, though, not mine.
Of all of the possibilities an uploaded human faces, the whole "I live a pleasant life exactly as I hoped and I'm never copied and never modified in a way I wouldn't approve of in advance indefinitely" is a scarily thin slice of the possible outcomes, and there's little reason other than exceedingly unfounded hope to think it's what will happen.
And this is the point where I think we have to agree to disagree. In both the present real-world case and the theoretical simulated-experience case, we both agree that there are extraordinary power differentials which _could_ allow privileged people to abuse unprivileged people in horrifying and consequence-free ways - and yet, in the real world, we observe that _some_ (certainly not all!) of those abuses are curtailed - whether by political action, or concerted activism, or the economic impacts of customers disliking negative press, or what have you.
I certainly agree with you that the _extent_ of abuses that are possible on a simulated being are orders-of-magnitude higher than those that a billionaire could visit on the average human today. But I don't agree that it's "_exceedingly_ unfounded" to believe that society would develop in such a way as to protect the interests of simulated-beings against abuse in the same way that it (incompletely, but not irrelevantly) protects the interests of the less-privileged today.
(Don't get me wrong - I think the balance of probability and risk is such that I'd be _extremely_ wary of such a situation, it's putting a lot of faith in society to keep protecting "me". I am just disagreeing with your evaluation of the likelihood - I think it's _probably_ true that, say, an effective "Simulated Beings' Rights" Movement would arise, whereas you seem to believe that that's nigh-impossible)
It is virtually inconceivable that the Simulated Beings Right's Movement would be universal in both space... and time. Don't forget about that one. Or that the nominal claims would be universally actually performed. See those Human Rights again; nominally I've got all sorts of rights, in reality, I find the claims are quite grandiose compared to the reality.
If you trust society to protect simulated-you (and I am _absolutely_ not saying that you _should_ - merely that present-day society indicates that it's not _entirely_ unreasonable to expect that it might at least _try_ to), simulation is not _guaranteed_ to be horrific.
Only one is guaranteed to end.
Regardless of the scheme, it all comes down to money. If you have lots of money you have lots of control about what happens to you.
Is that the world we live in? If nothing else, it seems a lot closer to the world of Lena than the one you present.
I used to terrify myself by thinking an Overmind would like torture itself on cosmic scales.
QNTM on the other hand doesn't have to work hard or be such a good plot-writer / narrator to be convincing. I think the premise sells itself from day one: the day you are a docker container is the day you (at first), and 10,000 github users (on day two) spin you up for thousands of years of subjective drudge work.
You'd need an immensely strong counterfactual on human behavior to even get to a believable alternative story, because this description is of a zero trust game -- it's not "would any humans opt out of treating a human docker image this way?" -- it's "would humans set up a system that's unbreakable and unhackable to prevent everyone in the world from doing this?" Or alternately, "would every single human who could do this opt not to do this?"
My answer to that is: nope. We come from a race that was willing to ship humans around the Atlantic and the Indian ocean for cheap labor at great personal risk to the ship captains and crews, never mind the human cost. We are just, ABSOLUTELY going to spin up 10,000 virtual grad students to spend a year of their life doing whatever we want them to in exchange for a credit card charge.
On the other hand, maybe you're right. If you have a working brain scan of yours I can run, I'd be happy to run a copy of it and check it out -- let me know. :)
Now I have to weigh that possibility.
A lot of the stories are free to read online without buying it but I thought the few dollars for the ebook was worth it
Without giving too much away, I recalled a specific story about a human consciousness being enslaved in a particular way, and ChatGPT confirmed that it was included in the book. I don’t think it is hallucinating, as it denied that similar stories I derived from that memory where in the book.
Is that correct? I thought the Roko's Basilisk post was just seen as really stupid. Agreed that "Lena" is a great, chilling story though.
Acausal is a misnomer. It's atemporal, but TDT's atemporal blackmail requires common causation: namely, the mathematical truth "how would this agent behave in this circumstance?".
So there's a simpler solution: be a human. Humans are incapable of simulating other agents simulating ourselves in the way that atemporal blackmail requires. Even if we were, we don't understand our thought processes well enough to instantiate our imagined AIs in software: we can't even write down a complete description of "that specific Roko's Basilisk you're imagining". The basic premises for TDT-style atemporal blackmail simply aren't there.
The hypothetical future AI "being able to simulate you" is irrelevant. There needs to be a bidirectional causal link between that AI's algorithm, and your here-and-now decision-making process. You aren't actually simulating the AI, only imagining what might happen if it did, so any decision the future AI (is-the-sort-of-agent-that) makes does not affect your current decisions. Even if you built Roko's Basilisk as Roko specified it, it wouldn't choose to torture anyone.
There is, of course, a stronger version of Roko's Basilisk, and one that's considerably older: evil Kantian ethics. See: any dictatorless dystopian society that harshly-punishes both deviance and non-punishment. There are plenty in fiction, though they don't seem to be all that stable in real life. (The obvious response to that idea is "don't set up a society that behaves that way".)
There are stronger versions of "basilisks" in the actual theory, but I've had people say not to talk about them. They mostly just get around various hole-patching schemes designed to prevent the issue, but are honestly more of a problem for certain kinds of utilitarians who refuse to do certain kinds of things.
You are very much right about the "being human" thing, someone go tell that to Zvi Mowshowitz. He was getting on Aschenbrenner's case for no reason.
Edit: oh, you don't need a "complete description" of your acausal bargaining partner, something something "algorithmic similarity".
If "algorithmic similarity" were a meaningful concept, Dijkstra's programme would have got off the ground, and we wouldn't be struggling so much to analyse the behaviour of the 6-state Turing machines.
(And on the topic of time machines: if Roko's Basilisk could actually travel back in time to ensure its own creation, Skynet-style, the model of time travel implies it could just instantiate itself directly, skipping the human intermediary.)
Timeless decision theory's atemporal negotiation is a concern for small, simple intelligences with access to large computational resources that they cannot verify the results of, and the (afaict impossible) belief that they have a copy of their negotiation partner's mind. A large intelligence might choose to create such a small intelligence, and then defer to it, but absent a categorical imperative to do so, I don't see why they would.
TDT theorists model the "large computational resources" and "copy of negotiation partner's mind" as an opaque oracle, and then claim that the superintelligence will just be so super that it can do these things. But the only way I can think of to certainly get a copy of your opponent's mind without an oracle, aside from invasive physical inspection (at which point you control your opponent, and your only TDT-related concern is that this is a simulation and you might fail a purity test with unknown rules), is bounding your opponent's size and then simulating all possible minds that match your observations of your opponent's behaviour. (Symbolic reasoning can beat brute-force to an extent, but the size of the simplest symbolic reasoner places a hard limit on how far you can extend that approach.) But by Cantor's theorem, this precludes your opponent doing the same to you (even if you both have literally infinite computational power – which you don't); and it's futile anyway because if your estimate of your opponent's size is a few bits too low, the new riddle of induction renders your efforts moot.
So I don't think there are any stronger versions of basilisks, unless the universe happens to contain something like the Akashic records (and the kind from https://qntm.org/ra doesn't count).
Your "subjunctively biconditional" is my "causal", because I'm wearing my Platonist hat.
As you said, it's near useless on Earth (don't need to predict what you can control), the nearest claimed application is the various possible causal diamond overlaps between "our" ASI and various alien ASIs, where each would be unable to prevent the other from existing in a causal manner.
Remember that infinite precision is an infinity too and does not really exist. As well as infinite time, infinite storage, etc. You probably don't even need infinite precision to avoid cheating on your imaginary girlfriend, just some sort of "philosophical targeting accuracy". But, you know, the only reason that's true is that everything related to imaginary girlfriends is made up.
In practice, we can still analyse programs, because the really gnarly examples are things like program-analysis programs (see e.g. the usual proof of the undecidability of the Halting problem), and those don't tend to come up all that often. Except, TDT thought experiments posit program-analysis programs – and worse, they're analysing each other…
Maybe there's some neat mathematics to attack large swathes of the solution space, but I have no reason to believe such a trick exists, and we have many reasons to believe it doesn't. (I'm pretty sure I could prove that no such trick exists, if I cared to – but I find low-level proofs like that unusually difficult, so that wouldn't be a good use of my time).
> Remember that infinite precision is an infinity too and does not really exist.
For finite discrete systems, infinite precision does exist. The bytestring representing this sentence is "infinitely-precise". (Infinitely-accurate still doesn't exist.)
He knows that can't possibly work, right? Implicitly it assumes perfect invulnerability to any method of coercion, exploitation, subversion, or suffering that can be invented by an intelligence sufficiently superhuman to have escaped its natal light cone.
There may exist forms of life in this universe for which such an assumption is safe. Humanity circa 2024 seems most unlikely to be among them.
Though in this case, in his defense, average people will never hear about Roko's Basilisk.
It's only within the past decade or so that the bulk of human population lives in an urban setting. Until that point most people did not and most people gone fishing, seen a carcass hanging in a butcher's shop, killed for food at least once, had a holiday on a farm if not worked on one or grown up farm adjacent.
By most people, of course, I refer to globally.
Throughout history vegetarianism was relatively rare save in vegatarian cultures (Hindi, et al) and in those cultures where it was rare people were all too aware of the animals they killed to eat. Many knew that pigs were smart and that dogs and cats interact with humans, etc.
Eliezer was correct to think that people who killed to eat thought about their food animals differently but I suspect it had less to do with sapience and more to do with thinking animals to be of a lesser order, or there to be eaten and to be nutured so there would be more for the years to come.
This is most evident in, sat, hunter societies, aboriginals and bushmen, who have extensive stories about animals, how they think, how they move and react, when they breed, how many can be taken, etc. They absolutely attribute a differing kind of thought, and they hunt them and try not to over tax the populations.
People who are not vegetarian but have never cared for or killed a farm animal were very likely (in most parts of the world) raised by people that have.
Even in the USofA much of the present generations are not far removed from grandparents who owned farms | worked farms | hunted.
The present day is a continuum from yesterday. Change can happen, but the current conditions are shaped by the prior conditions.
It's a bit odd that someone would like to argue on the topic, but also either not have heard that or not recognize the ha-ha-only-serious nature of it.
Being very good at an arbitary specific game isn't the same as being smart. Prrendit that the universe is the same as your game is not wise.
On reflection, I could've inferred that from his crowd's need for a concept of "typical mind fallacy." I suppose I hadn't thought it all the way through.
I'm in a weird spot on this, I think. I can follow most of the reasoning behind LW/EA/generally "Yudkowskyish" analysis and conclusions, but rarely find anything in them which I feel requires taking very seriously, due both to weak postulates too strongly favored, and to how those folks can't go to the corner store without building a moon rocket first.
I recognize the evident delight in complexity for its own sake, and I do share it. But I also recognize it as something I grew far enough out of to recognize when it's inapplicable and (mostly!) avoid indulging it then.
The thought can feel somewhat strange, because how I see those folks now palpably has much in common with how I myself was often seen in childhood, as the bright nerd I then was. (Both words were often used, not always with unequivocal approbation.) Given a different upbringing I might be solidly in the same cohort, if about as mediocre there as here. But from what I've seen of the results, there seems no substantive reason to regret the difference in outcome.
Acausal blackmail only works if one agent U predicts the likely future (or, otherwise not-yet-having-causal-influence) existence of another agent V, who would take actions so that if U’s actions aren’t in accordance with V’s preferences, then V’s actions will do harm to U(‘s interests) (eventually). But, this only works if U predicts the likely possible existence of V and V’s blackmail.
If V is having a causal influence of U, in order to do the blackmail, that’s just ordinary coercion. And, if U doesn’t anticipate the existence (and preferences) of V, then U won’t cooperate with any such attempts at acausal blackmail.
(… is “blackmail” really the right word? It isn’t like there’s a threat to reveal a secret, which I typically think of as central to the notion of blackmail.)
Now, if it’s irrational to do so, then it’s irrational to do so, even though it is possible. But I’m not so sure it is irrational. If one is considering situations with things as powerful and oppositional as that, it seems like, unless one has a full solid theory of acausal trade ready and has shown that it is beneficial, that it is probably best to blanket refuse all acausal threats, so that they don’t influence what actually happens here.
Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, given how we would misuse such an ability), strong precommitments are not available to humans. Our ability to self-modify is vague and bounded. In our organizations and other intelligent tools, we probably should make such precommitments.
"When Roko posted about the Basilisk, I very foolishly yelled at him, called him an idiot, and then deleted the post. [...] Why I yelled at Roko: Because I was caught flatfooted in surprise, because I was indignant to the point of genuine emotional shock, at the concept that somebody who thought they'd invented a brilliant idea that would cause future AIs to torture people who had the thought, had promptly posted it to the public Internet"[1]
- Absurdle: Wordle where the computer narrows down (as little as possible) to a solution word as you guess https://qntm.org/files/absurdle/absurdle.html
- "All I want for Christmas is a negative leap second" https://qntm.org/leap
- "It's probably time to stop recommending Clean Code" https://qntm.org/clean
Interesting cat!
A later blog post about the story:
> ...What just happened? What was flicking the switch for? Was tapping the empty mug part of the procedure? Where did the coffee come from?
> That's what this code is like.
I hope to never write code that warrants a description half as scathing as this one
I've thought about it a lot as I've seen mental decline in my family too. The long goodbye. Marion Wheeler's relationship. Beautiful.
This is such a colossal mood. I have DID and it's incredibly common for me to not remember trauma, but still somehow have to navigate life affected by it. It's really weird how I can know exactly what not to do without even knowing that I'm avoiding something, or what it is I'm avoiding.
It's neat to see that SCP also resulted in some... reasonably novel thinking? Thanks for sharing, I'm going to pick this up.
What followed was a few weeks of me re-reading them, discovering several new offshoots of the SCP genre, and getting to discover those works for the first time with my kids.
It was an awesome experience, and something I honestly never expected to come out of a random “old Internet” meme like that. :)
http://www.dangerousthings.net/ - The MC is an intern at a containment facility. What could go wrong?
It is admittedly odd that I have been very online for a very long time and this is the first I can recall seeing this.
Scp stories quality and style vary a lot and there are a lot of them. I would suggest:
- SCP-096
- SCP-3008
- SCP-294
- SCP-4666
To warm you up.
It's worth seeking out the "top rated pages" section of the wiki, especially when you are starting out. This can help introduce you to some of the more famous SCPs that you are likely to see reference elsewhere.
On the other hand, one of the charming things about the SCP articles is just how different and weird they can be. So don't be afraid to just read around. For example, one of my favorites is a woman who basically has a portal to an entire underground bunker in her nostrils.
The SCP wiki has resources for how to write an SCP article. A lot of these are EXCELLENT if you are interested in learning how to write weird fiction even outside of SCP (e.g. the D&D campaign you mentioned). For example, one of them discusses different ways that you can structure stories to subvert expectations.
The video game Control is not set in the SCP universe but is highly influenced by it. It's a lot of fun.
There are a number of SCP games available on Steam. They tend to have some jank due to being fan projects. However, the end result is often very cool. In particular, many of them have procedurally generated levels which works well with the wide variety of anomalous phenomena that they can add.
The best novel I've read in the past decade.
Antimemetics remains a top 10 all-time though.
It's good, but didn't leave that big of an impression on me, maybe because I didn't know all the SCP stuff beforehand, I just liked qntm's other works so I read it.
I don't think it needs to relate to any _specific_ development of the recent past, which I assume is what you're asking.
FWIW, the two notable world events were the deployment of French troops to the French Caledonian riots and the first successful Ukrainian attack on a Russian oil export facility. Were either of them indicative of a broader destabilization? Only time will tell.
Rollercoaster is a clear give away they're talking about future acceleration.
I'd bet it's an ode to the possible dystopia coming with technological acceleration a la AGI.
"someone at the front of the train begins to scream"
X-Risk / "doomers"? They're screaming first, but the rest will soon too.
And it wasn't even there for ages - I only noticed it when I went to get this link to ask about it.
It’s also one of the most genuinely scary books I’ve read. There are some scenes in this book that really are frightening.
Maybe House of Leaves is up there too.
But then, how could I be sure that the notes were trustworthy?
Something in the last days made me fall in love with books again, although I can’t remember exactly what. Also, the title of this post is confusing - what is an antimeme?
I was reading this a few months ago but put it down because the language and characters clunky but I will definitely revisit it after this thread as the ideas are apparently worth it.
There are plenty of bookclubs that read similar books too. Just pick a platform and search.
Also stuff like star destroyer
https://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewforum.php?f=54
Or the sietch
https://www.the-sietch.com/index.php?forums/creative-writing...
Or many reddit communities like
As for meatspace, if you have a local LessWrong / rationalist adjacent meetup, those are usually full of people who read stuff like this.
I'd generally describe the story as having great concepts and okay writing. It's worth working through the writing to get to the concepts in my opinion.
edit: Oh, I saw it right after posting the comment. It's quite literally in front of your nose. Such a fun series.
Which only pushes your question back one level. I've thought the derivation of "amnestic" is somewhat questionable before too. But it established itself very early. There's some other parts of very, very early SCP lore that are pretty questionable; flinging arbitrary numbers of the so-called "D-Class" death row inmates into the waiting maw of a cosmic horror has become fairly disfavored for a variety of reasons over time too, for instance. But it's part of the groundwork now.
(Yes, I typed that correctly).
Would make for a very interesting read.
It is a sequel.
You don't remember the first book?
So.. antimemes have high Kolmogorov complexity?
I had almost total disassociative amnesia after sexual abuse by an older friend in elementary school, possibly Jr High. While I remembered the friend, I still don’t really remember the abuse and know about it until my parents warned me about this person moving back while I was in high school. However, I was still very sensitive regarding any nudity (even with sexual partners) and personal space until I spent some time with a therapist.
I think the memories of the abuse were truly gone and not repressed, recovery of repressed memories seems to be pseudoscience. However, it doesn’t seem implausible to lose only the episodic memory of the trauma.
You really don't remember it being in theatres a few years ago?
There was a mini series released this year (March 2024): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32017112/
and also a short film: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32269914/
On the other hand, I have no idea how a miniseries or even a movie could reasonably adapt this for even a general sci-fi audience. As viscerally stimulating as film can be, there are some high-concept stories that just need text.
I will compliment the miniseries for how it selected the subset of stories to adapt. There is a nice natural ending there. A downer, perhaps, but, welcome to the SCP-iverse.
"I forgot what universe this was. For a while there, I thought, maybe… this was the universe where we win sometimes." - https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/your-last-first-day (not used in the miniseries)