BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
No bio...
User ID: 3614
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
4d ago
The fact that very few of the characters actually had any agency at all in Blindsight is a feature, not a bug. You're not reading about plucky oddballs making decisions and saving the world, you're reading about an extended game of 4D chess between two non-conscious gods in which the humans are a footnote at best. Theseus itself is an analogy for how the book says the human brain works, with the conscious actors being irrelevant at best and actively harmful at worst, and the non conscious actors being responsible for almost everything in spite of the fact they’re usually backgrounded in the plot.
Yeah, and this is where I will defend Watt’s writing in these two books, where Blindsight is his masterpiece and will probably go down as a classic of 21st-century science fiction. Sure, his characters are frequently more like plot coupons, but they’re not really the story. The story is about titanic forces moving around in the background, between the lines on the page, which is pretty cool when he pulls it off and the reader figures it out.
I think that’s basically the theme he’s always writing about, even his early Rifters series was like a first stab at that idea.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
4d ago
You’ve never heard of Thalidomide?
And it’s not about comparing, it’s about Science not being perfect, despite it’s many notable successes.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
4d ago
One day some dudes with erlenmeyer tubes showed up, and they saved half the children. They saved half the children.
They also turned some of them into flippered mutants, so let us not act like Science has ever batted 1.000 here. Not the physical sciences, and certainly not the social sciences.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
4d ago
I am somewhat unfairly advantaged by having been a lurker long before I started posting, but you and I have significantly different points of view on what constitutes “a bad thing.”
That said, I once believed the trajectory of human civilization was in the direction of being golden gods, so I have hopes that you’ll come around. [[Insert positive emoji of your choice]]
Completely unrelated, but I have often wanted to pick your brain on your, trying to be fair here, significant concern around death. Correct everything wrong about my interpretations of your ideas, but you seem to be very focused on instantiating uploads and achieving eternal cyber life of the mind at some point in your expected lifespan.
It seems trivial to me that a society that can actually achieve that goal, is on the cusp of being able to simulate every mind that ever lived, and any arbitrary number of minds that didn’t. So if you think it’s inevitable that simulation will happen, what’s your concern about dying? The pain will suck, I’m sure and that’s fair, I’d enjoy a golden god body too, but it seems highly likely given your priors that you’ll just go to sleep and then wake up a simulation at some unspecified point in the future, with no sensation of loss.
What do you think? Do you want to spin this conversation off somewhere else?
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
4d ago
Strongly B.
I have no stance one way or the other on whether there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. Sure, it’s a bit implausible that we’re the first, but also someone has to be so why not us? It’s just unknowable at the moment.
If there is intelligent life and it developed further away than Mars, I think it is impossible for it to have the means and desire to reach Earth, and then spend the last 80 to 8000 years apparently mostly focused on pranking us. They would have conquered us to work in the unobtanium mines, or coldly and amorally reshaped the planet to their liking, or just moved on, or something.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
4d ago
I want to believe, but also there are no aliens in the classical “beings from outer space” sense.
I rate this news 5 Nothings out of 5 Ever Happens.
You are correct that Comic Sans is the appropriate font for this.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
4d ago
Adoption is an even worse offender if you take this line of thinking.
No significant argument here. The kind of adoption process that involves traveling the world to find the perfect orphan is straight-up child buying, and has some moral similarities to eugenic embryo modification.
What I am struggling with, however, is understanding the game plan of the aliens - specifically why on Earth the alien Theseus went up against would intentionally seed the Icarus Array with a lifeform capable of turning the entirety of humanity into a super-intelligent hive-mind. That is an utterly suicidal move.
My takeaway from the two books was this:
Beginning of Blindsight
Theseus arrives at Big Ben.
The Captain/Jukka Sarasti realizes almost immediately upon encountering Big Ben that all current life in the Solar System is fucked.
Big Ben is the alien. The Scramblers are just antibodies or pieces of the larger hivemind that is Big Ben/Rorschach.
The rest of the plot of Blindsight plays out, with The Captain knowing in advance that Theseus and its crew will be inevitably reprogrammed and consumed by the Scramblers.
The Captain executes a dead man’s hand strategy where whatever information Big Ben inevitably sends back down the telematter stream to Icarus is going to be edited/hacked.
End of Blindsight/Beginning of Echopraxia
Big Ben sends information back down the telematter stream to Icarus. Under normal circumstances, this would start the process of creating Big Ben 2, except now with access to all the matter and energy of the Sun, rather than the brown dwarf Big Ben 1 was found orbiting.
The Captain’s dead man’s hand strategy results in this information not beginning the process of making Big Ben 2, but rather Portia, which has similar capabilities to Big Ben 1 but is a competing organism. This hack was what the Captain was working on the whole time Theseus was engaging with Big Ben.
The Captain expects Portia to consume all life in the Solar System, but in a hivemind kind of way similar to the Bicams, thus allowing humanity and vampires to continue existing, sort of, while also being able to compete against entities like Big Ben.
End of Echopraxia
Portia is humanity. The human shaped bodies are just antibodies or pieces of the larger hivemind that is Portia.
Book 3 would be a war of super-intelligences between the alien Big Ben and the nearly as alien Portia, with all remaining human-esque entities caught in the middle.
I find it interesting to think that under this interpretation, the Captain is an exquisitely well-aligned super-intelligence. Its strategy is the only way to save anything of what humanity was, given the circumstances and universe as presented.
Anyways, to answer your question with my personal interpretation, the alien’s plan took a left turn when the Captain was able to execute some kind of Hail Mary man-in-the-middle attack on their information transfer to Icarus.
Incidentally, this all implies that almost all of the character actions in Blindsight are irrelevant to the plot, and even actively counterproductive, because the single most important thing occurring is the Captain making sure that Big Ben never susses out that there is another super-intelligence in the mix.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
4d ago
Are children possessions? Can they be bought and sold?
Er, well, no
Surrogacy businesses everywhere in sudden disarray.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
7d ago
That’s even more deportable than the gang tattoos.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
9d ago
What is to be done? Clearly we must do something
Why must we do something?
Or are you describing someone else’s thinking? Sorry, it just isn’t clear to me if the quoted bit is your own thinking on the subject.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
10d ago
I raise you Michael Mansell.
Confident that they could, and so never having asked if they should, Australian eugenics scientists continue to pursue their goal of creating the whitest oppressed black person to ever live.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
10d ago
Thanks for the info!
Very interesting stuff.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
10d ago
There's not really any way of determining who is aboriginal, indigenous or first nations either. That's because the mostly or nearly-all white people who claim to be indigenous are naturally the most charismatic and well-organized in the movement (they're the people graduating good universities as doctors under affirmative action), while the most indigenous and blackest out in rural, remote parts of the country are the least educated, least charismatic and generally criminal sort.
I’ve got to admit, it would be pretty funny if, 80 years from now, there are just a bunch of lily-white, blonde, “Aboriginal” people leading the various tribes, like some sort of real life Burroughs or Haggard novel.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
10d ago
Lidia Thorpe is the whitest black person I’ve ever seen, and I’m old enough to remember Rachel Dolezal.
Do the noble Aboriginal people not have some kind of paper bag test they can use to keep these carpetbaggers out?
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
11d ago
I guess I just don’t see a way in which property rights aren’t a social project.
Do you? If so, do you have the time to explain your point of view?
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
11d ago
I think it would be fair to say that Point 2 is smuggling in the idea that it is not a social project, but it appears to me that it is in fact a social project. Civilization is nothing if not a social project and so defending its key cornerstone must also be a social project, I would think. That would then make Point 3 contradictory, as libertarians would appear to be just as willing as anyone else to deploy violence for their social project.
Which would seem to indicate that this:
Its all just special pleading by each specific author on why their specific social project deserves an exception.
is a statement that applies just as well to libertarianism.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
13d ago
would prefer if you just spoke directly.
Do you think there is any utility at all to marriage, for a billionaire?
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
13d ago
My priority is winning, because that’s how you execute power. If EHC needs to be appealed to in order to understand that having power is better than not having power, I question how elite they actually are.
Again, what is EHC actually going to do? If they are so elite, why are they incapable of directing the herd of unwashed sheep?
Traditionally, a shepherd demonstrates his superiority over the sheep by making sure the sheep do what he says. If he’s not capable of leading them, he’s not much of a shepherd.
So, again, assuming your Nietszchean WTP movement is more aligned, even if only a tiny bit, with MAGA than with bio-Leninism, how do you propose to build on that opportunity? How will you lead the sheep?
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
13d ago
I participate in fighting sports, some very mainstream, a couple a bit niche. I enjoy doing it and used to be very competitive in one of the mainstream ones. But I broke a leg a couple years back and have been slow to get back into things.
That is changing this week, and I aim to be sparring once a week again consistently and training three times a week, plus general fitness stuff. I have, I think, the benefit of decades of experience that will keep me from overdoing things.
I will autistically let the Motte know how it goes, whether you’re interested or not.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
13d ago
Trump is demonstrably capable of gaining power though, and you’re not, so assuming your Nietszchean WTP movement is, as seems tautological, more directionally aligned with him than with current bio-Leninist leftists, how are you going to build on his provable successes?
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
13d ago
I feel like if I report this as a quality contribution, the mods will start ignoring my other positive reports.
But this is a quality contribution.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
13d ago
I mentioned my coworker as a shorthand for the pervasive phenomenon of people complaining about their marriages in relation to a pontification that marriage was easier than having an employee as a billionaire. To that extent you're not even elevating a point by imagining things about my coworker, just bloviating a cope.
Call me Copius Maximus! Call me Blovius Rex! Call me a delusional faggot wife guy, let it all out. Get it all out of your system, it’s good for you. But you’re finally admitting that approach was a weak support for your argument, so we’re making progress.
Now we’re talking about what you consider to be a pervasive phenomenon. But there is also a pervasive phenomenon of people complaining about everything. People like to complain. People also like to say positive things, often about the same things they complain about.
If you are only hearing complaints, and only listen to the complaints while ignoring countervailing feedback, you’re closing off your intellectual space. There is no difference, besides the perceived rudeness of the language, between you dismissing all the “wife guys,” and me dismissing your loser coworker.
'Some kind of utility' is not relevant as a point of comparison between whether or not delegating a duty to your wife or an employee is an easier way to go about organizing your lives together. The post I replied to gave examples of the utility of having a marriage. I asserted that these examples and others categorically like them are not relevant for a billionaire and are therefor not arguments in favor of marriage for a billionaire.
Do you think there is any utility at all to marriage, for a billionaire?
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
14d ago
I will just say that I think fertility is a bit of a crisis in a lot of places, but not necessarily in the way people think.
If the concern is “Lowered fertility makes the GDP line stop going up,” that’s not a crisis. GDP lines should be allowed to fluctuate up and down as populations grow and shrink. It’s not the end of the world, especially in the nuclear age.
From that standpoint, there is no deficit that needs to be made up with foreigners. The native population will organically wax and wane over time if not interfered with. It’s only when a lot of foreigners are brought in that a native population might begin to feel pressured to spur increased fertility rates as a way of not being boxed out by invasive newcomers, which creates a fertility crisis.
I think it is at least moderately possible that we live in such a degraded political and media environment, that Donald Trump can rise to the Presidency by just continuously doing the thing that seems like the best idea at the time. So, compromised or not, run on nailing Epstein johns to the wall, because that incrementally improves your electoral chances. Then, once in power, if it turns out there are reasons to not release that information, just do a 180 with no explanation and brazen out the short term consequences because they don’t matter in the long run.
Donald Trump walks the Shortest Path.
More options
Context Copy link