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self_made_human  amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi  3mo ago (open.substack.com)   1650 thread views

Avatar's Dirty Secret: Nature Is Just Fancy Infrastructure

open.substack.com

What if Avatar isn't actually about environmentalism vs. technology, but about recognizing superintelligent infrastructure when you see it? A deep dive into why Pandora's "natural" ecosystem looks suspiciously like a planetary-scale AI preserve, complete with biological USB-C ports, room-temperature superconductors growing wild, and a species of "noble savages" who are actually post-singularity retirees cosplaying as hunter-gatherers.

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As has long been theorized [citations from various sources, three known to Ølvira; the theories cited are of long standing and nondisprovable] the Zones themselves may be an artifact, perhaps created by something beyond Transcendence for the protection of lesser forms, or [hypothetical] sentient gas clouds in galactic cores. - "Twirlip of the Mists"

Twirlip sounds like an utter kook ("Appears to be seriously out of touch. Program recommendation: delete this poster from presentation."), but one of its other theories (zone interface instability being connected to the Blight) was right on the money, and even its craziest theory ("Hexapodia as the key insight", "If these humans have three pairs of legs") sounds a tiny bit less crazy when you realize the Skroderiders have six wheels...

Ah so they did pretty much put the pieces together for the reader.

Also this was very prescient of the "forum of obsessives throws wacky theories around and analyzes tons of evidence and manages to stumble upon something close to the truth" phenomena that sometimes occurs nowadays.

Not that prescient, as the net in AFUTD was heavily inspired by the early 1990s Usenet computer network, and the phenomenon you describe existed just as much on Usenet back then as on Internet fora today.

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