site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   3000 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 30, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

3
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

So, what are you reading?

I finished al-Ghazali's Banes of the Tongue, which was well worth the read. I can dimly see some aspects of Islam, and in particular the hadith "Beware of the believer's intuition because he sees by the light of God" has caught my eye. There is a sense of leaving uncovered what God has covered and not speaking about what doesn't concern you; in particular, if one is gossiped to, the gossip says more about the gossiper than the one who is spoken about. It has kindled an interest in ways of knowing which might arise from an Islamic mindset.

What is forbidden is supposition [about another's alleged evil ways], and supposition is an expression of what the soul believes is reliable, and the heart inclines toward. God says, O you who have believed, avoid much negative assumption. Indeed, some assumption is sin [Q. 49:12]. The reason for its unlawfulness is because the secrets of the hearts are known only to the Knower of the unseen, so it is not for you to believe in another’s wickedness unless it is disclosed to you by observation and cannot be explained away.

The book is quite comprehensive, talking about things like arguments, joking, praising or being praised, and I'm sure to be revisiting this often.

I decided to see what web serials were all about and picked up A Practical Guide to Evil. I've read the first two books (which is like one sixth of the whole story) and I'm done with it. I ain't reading a series that is more than five times longer than War and Peace unless it is at least twice as good. And this book is not.

At its heart, PG2E is a YA novel with obvious influences: you can see when the author channelled GRRM, Yudkowsky, Rosenfelder. And it could've been a good YA novel if it had a good editor that was willing to do two things:

  • get rid of sixty percent of the text
  • bring the quality of the prose of the first chapters to the level of the latter ones

I understand that both goals are really hard if not impossible to achieve when you are self-publishing your work chapter by chapter, but I am not satisfied with the quality of the final result at all. I'll give Mother of Learning an honest try next to see if the genre is salvageable.

Are web serials for people that read a lot and like reading the same thing?

Oh, and I got through How Not to Write a Novel. The authors spent too much effort on writing excruciatingly bad examples. I would prefer if they actually used fragments from real novels as examples and spend their effort on explaining less obvious problems than "don't make your characters too perfect or completely pitiful".

I didn't like Mother of Learning. It's literally just Time Braid*, but worse†.

If you want the best the web novel medium has to offer, I'd recommend Worth the Candle by Alexander Wales‡.

* Zorian is Sakura, Zach is Naruto, Red Robe is Sasuke, QI is Orochiramu, they are all trapped in a one-month time loop that ends with an invasion, etc.; it's obvious once you know Domagoj Kurmaic listed Time Braid as one of his favorite stories on FanFiction.Net.

† Mother of Learning is slower, the fights are less exciting, the characters are flatter, and there is less fanservice.

‡ Unless glowfic counts, in which case I'd recommend Project Lawful by Eliezer Yudkowsky (LessWrong) and Kelsey Piper (The Unit of Caring).

I'd recommend Worth the Candle by Alexander Wales

I want the best medium-length web novel medium has to offer. Wales is good, but if I remember correctly, he's not known for brevity.

If it has to be original, I quite enjoyed Ra. The author is better known nowadays for his Antimemetics Division SCPs.

I also stand by Wildbow’s work. Twig is his best character writing, in my opinion, but it wasn’t nearly as condensed as I remember.

There’s really something to be said for reading those as they come out. I’m currently keeping up with Flower that bloomed nowhere, which is far far too meandering to recommend in this case. Still, it’s convinced me that it’s carefully planned to come together. The Blemished Age is much tighter but also unfinished.

Ra

Hm. I completely forgot about the book, even though it hasn't been so long since I read it. And I feel similarly about Antimemetics and UNSONG. I read those, and it was fun while I read them...but in the end, nothing stuck. They left no impression. And I say this as someone who extensively, obsessively thinks over, re-reads and researches what he reads. Rationalist fiction is completely ephemeral to me. I suspect it has something to do with them trying to be too clever, and failing to build upon truly universal themes in favor of overly complicated, completely overengineered gimmicks that end up being broad but shallow. Or maybe they're just mediocre writers whose prose isn't up to snuff.

If it has to be original, I quite enjoyed Ra.

So did I.

There’s really something to be said for reading those as they come out.

I really dislike ongoing series. Having to shift from binging to waiting is my least favorite part of the reading experience.

Wales actually has a handful of great short stories. IMHO they're better on average than his long fiction!

Also, although I loved Worth the Candle, it's long and some of its twists and turns are controversial. IMHO every revelation was utterly sensible in hindsight and made a good story even better, but de gustibus non disputandum, and I recognize that if I didn't like a major twist after I'd read 200-odd chapters to get to it I'd be massively disappointed.

You might try his The Metropolitan Man. Fan fiction, but a great combination of clever reconstructions and deconstructions that lead to unique differences from the canon. 80k words, so more "short-length web novel" than medium-length, though.

I really liked The Metropolitan Man. The Terminator fanfic was terrible, though.

Link to his website

AO3 link for easy downloading

You might try his The Metropolitan Man. Fan fiction, but a great combination of clever reconstructions and

Seeing the Wales discussion, I was going to mention Metropolitan Man. Quite possibly my favorite Rationalist story, not least because it's one of a handful of well-made art pieces that I love for very clearly elucidating a perspective I strongly disagree with. It's simultaneously the best argument for and against Rationalism that I've seen.

very clearly elucidating a perspective I strongly disagree with

I'd love to find out what you're talking about here. The obvious candidate that jumps to mind is Lex Luthor's rational but ultimately self-destructive analysis of Superman-as-existential-threat but although that's one of the most fascinating parts of the book, it's a classic villain elucidating a perspective that even the author, albeit non-clearly, disagrees with and once I start thinking of less-obvious candidates ... well, I don't mean "what are you talking about?" in the idiomatic "you sound crazy" sense, but in the literal "there are like five things you could be talking about but I'm not sure which it is" sense.

Is there author commentary somewhere? My read was that Luthor did the rationally-correct thing, that the benefits of Superman weren't worth the existential risk, and the ambiguity just drives home the idea that Rationalism is a gamble, and the best you can do is make smart bets. In what sense would Wales disagree with that position?

What were the other five things? I really ought to read it again.

I haven't read author commentary, so you could be right. My read is that Luthor might have been doing the rationally-correct thing in a world where only Superman exists, but in a world where Superman is just a single example of a whole class of existential threats (which is likely from Luthor's perspective, a priori, and which would be certain if this universe actually matched the DC universe, and which arguably includes Luthor himself futzing around with Kryptonian technology), the risk of Superman turning on us if left alive is less than the extra risk of meeting others among those threats without Superman to help.

IIRC the other big perspectives that might engender disagreement (or stronger disagreement, when there's disagreement presented in-story):

Luthor's characterization here was excellent, and Superman's good, but my only concern with the story is that I think Lois feels like more of a stretch vs her canon characterizations.

It was just too implausible that Kryptonians would look perfectly human but have superpowers, and something like the "spider-eel" form was necessary to keep the story rational.

Superman arguably should be obeying virtue ethics, even if the consequentialist outcomes of that allow for horrors, because the risks of him becoming less virtuous (or, as it turned out, of being perceived as less virtuous) are even greater.

"Clark Kent", though, is a weird and probably suboptimal compromise between the suffering that could have been prevented via extra time spent as Superman and the suffering to Superman himself (and to others if he snaps) if he couldn't even pretend to be a regular person.

More comments

Okay, yeah, if you want brevity, then webfic is probably the wrong medium for you.

On the other hand, I feel like a lot of the complains about how long web novels are comes from a category error?

They are absurdly long compared to individual books, but they aren't unusual by the standards of sagas like Harry Potter or Narnia. Some of them are even internally divided into books (Worth the Candle, Mother of Learning, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, etc.).

But people are still treating them like someone dropped a one-million word book on their shelf, instead of a series.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats