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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   3617 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 30, 2023

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So, what are you reading?

I'm still on Herzog's Citizen Knowledge. I can't say I care much for the discussions of actual events, but there are a lot of interesting references, and its position is very clearly written.

I'm also reading papers found in New Directions in the Ethics and Politics of Speech, edited by J.P. Messina (also open access). Currently, Cohen and Cohen's The Possibility and Defensibility of Nonstate "Censorship." This collection at least seems much more self-aware of censorship issues raised in recent times.

I'm about halfway through Eisel Mazard's No More Manifestos. I wish I could find a good review online because I can't do it justice, but it's hard to put the book down and hard to scoff at even if the ideas he's proposing are very radical.

In the last chapter I read he proposed that much of the abuses perpetrated by faceless bureaucrats and cops alike are largely the result of boredom, which induces callousness. He proposes as a solution an expanded version of Aristotle's notion of democratic equality (where civil functions are allocated by lot and any citizen can be called upon to serve say any function of the court) whereby any citizen can be called upon to serve as a policeman for a short period, or any policeman to serve a teaching function, or any surgeon a role as a nurse (suited to their abilities of course, a janitor wouldn't serve as a surgeon and a cop might only be suited to teach very basic subjects).

The goal isn't income equality or even a transfer of skills, but a disruption of the boredom induced by specialisation and a way to inject into the workplace a very practical notion of equality without falling into the terrible traps of aiming for income inequality or equality of status. The doctor will have more appreciation for the hard parts of a nurses job if he has spent at least a short time performing them himself, he will also have a more accurate idea of when they are being lazy and can hold them to the same standards he holds himself. The minor corruptions that are wilfully ignored in any job will be subject to more scrutiny if say cops have to allow regular citizens to work alongside them, and people will have more productive interactions with the police if they understand first-hand how difficult a job it is. The type of loyalty that allows police officers to coordinate on a lie covering up a bungled arrest would likely be disrupted if 2 of the 5 officers present during the incident were just normal citizens on a job rotation.

There's an anecdote about his attempt to join the Canadian military, and how as an artillery officer he would not be expected to know how to operate the guns himself. The lack of hands on experience here deprives officers of the ability to really know when their troops are working their hardest and when they are just being lazy, and the same goes for every type of institution.

The book A Christmas Story, which is a collection of 5 short stories that inspired the movie. It's hilarious, given you find the movie hilarious.

I'm on The Screwtape Letters by Lewis, and just started Violence Unveiled by Gil Bailie.

The latter is so far a staggeringly impressive work - perhaps the most important book I've ever read if it continues to impress as it has in the first third. It's an in-depth discussion of the Girardian scapegoating mechanism, how the passion of Christ turned that mechanism on it's head, and how many of our modern problems boil down to the inability to differentiate between scared violence and profane violence.

Found an annotated paper copy of Pacific Crucible in a used book store in SD that was definitely owned by some retired officer; enjoying the read on paper immensely.

Oho, lucky find. I’m a little envious.

I pick up well-worn histories when I find them. So far the best has been Thunder Below.

I'm at the 2100s in Reverend Insanity, that's chapters, not pages. I honestly have no clue how long it actually is, since I heard that it's technically unfinished, I've been stridently resisting the urge to peek and see how many remain. One of the many advantages of ebooks over dead tree books, which always make me feel a sense of dread when a new novel comes to an end.

And as per usual, I've been working on my own Cultivation novel The Dao of Simulation, which is significantly easier to write than my other unfinished work, which had me sticking to the very high standards of rationalist fiction as best as I could.

In Xianxia, both the reader and the author can usually switch off their brain and the former write whatever the fuck they want, knowing that the latter will read anything that's grammatically coherent (and not even necessarily that, given old machine translations).

My work is a mixture of deeply stupid humor, in-jokes, and occasional poignancy. Spoilers below, but you can look forward to charming excerpts like:

Bruh I say again, these are spoilers

He wisely avoided pointing the laser at the village itself, instead aiming for a nearby tree, which promptly caught fire. Not like the whole thing going up in flames, just a few leaves. He quickly dialed it down, and decided to try using it to signal one of the flyers.

At this point, he quickly learned why the app came with an FAQ explaining why it wasn't FCC or FAA approved, because even reduced in intensity as it was, the beam blinded the rider, and in his pain and panic, he fell off his mount and plummeted several hundred feet into the ground.

Or

"State your name for the Imperial record." The envoy ordered.

"Isaac Kai"

"Kai, of the Isaac clan?"

"Oh, no, it's the Anglicized form, not the Chinese way."

">What's a Chinese?" The envoy asked suspiciously.

"Umm, you're Chinese. I'm like a quarter Chinese myself." Isaac explained.

I'm sure @2rafa will appreciate the deep-cut RSP reference if nobody else does

I'm tired of using spoiler tags

Then:

Hello Adventurer Null Null

Welcome to the Realms of Magic

Please choose a class:

  1. Knight
  2. Wizard
  3. Mage
  4. Nuclear Physicist
  5. Chiropractor
  6. Alchemist
  7. F1 driver
  8. Chimpanzee
  9. Thief
  10. Archer (50 lb draw weight and below)
  11. Lord of Destruction (1/1 available, player only)
  12. Knight (left-handed)

||Isaac was smarter than me, because while I was checking the skill tree for Chimpanzee, my eyes boggling at frankly OP banana peeling skill, he decisively chose "Lord of Destruction".

This crashed the entire Simulation. For a few nanoseconds. I quickly managed to fix the issue, something to do with a collection of lootboxes that had been banned for corrupting the youth.

Congratulations on your first Legendary Class!

Lord of Destruction comes with a complimentary assortment of premium cosmetics, but we're sure you're most interested in the unique skill tree and summonable items!

You'll have to put your skills to the test, as your class is marked as PvPvE. But you'll certainly look sick doing it!

Isaac grinned from ear to ear as a sense of unchecked power rushed through his system, he felt himself float a few millimeters off the ground, which while not particularly impressive, still felt pretty good.

The Village Chief fell onto his knees, sobbing with pride, "Ah, if I had known this day would come, I wouldn't have felt so depressed about picking F1 driver."||

Can one forget? :

But what Isaac did find useful was some kind of charging pad, likely what was used to top up their remaining two laser weapons. Documentation was non-existent on why the hell it worked with an iPhone, but I think it's just because the previous dev thought the idea of "Qi" wireless charging being a thing in a Cultivation setting was super funny.

Or my personal favorite:

The Wizard's Tower shimmered in the light, its ethereal appearance half-suggested it would blink out of existence. Under the curious gaze of some Inner Disciples, Isaac was escorted inside, where a revolving staircase led all the way up to the rooms at the top.

There, he met a Cultivator who could have passed as an extra in the Lord of the Rings, wearing a sparkling wizard's robe and a pointy hat with a frog snoozing on top. An ornate plate on his desk announced him as High Chancellor Short Aotian (PhD, CIS, LMFAO), Spirit Master of the Spirit Realm. He was standing in front of a window, gently pondering an orb that spun with arcane flames. In the background, another knock-off albatross patrolled as its operator sprayed a tank of Qi over the neighborhood, reducing the strain on the local Cultivators.

"Sit, Isaac isn't it?" Short Aotian said.

Isaac bowed again, before taking a seat. "Yes Lord Aotian, I am honored to be in your presence."

"We can skip the pleasantries! Your arrival is a great boon, here I was thinking we'd have to shut down the Otherworldly Demon research program, we've got one poor Daoist going on 70 and yet unable to submit a dissertation for his PhD without a research subject. By the way, in your world, do they have wizards?" He asked earnestly.

"Uh.. I suppose you could say that." Isaac admitted.

"Really? What did they wear?" Short Aotian brought out a magical scroll and began scribbling furiously.

"I think it was white robes and pointy white hats for the most part."

"Ah! And can you tell me about any relevant roles and ranks?" The "Wizard" adjusted his reading glasses in anticipation.

"I don't remember all the details, but I'm pretty sure that the higher ups had something called a Grand Dragon!" Isaac said glibly.

"A perfectly cromulent name for such an enlightened people. Can you tell me what kind of magic they used?"

"Mostly lighting people on fire I guess."

"Perfect! Here, have some tea, you come from a very interesting world indeed."

How much time do you spend on writing vs editing? I'm in a love-hate relationship with editing (hate to do it, love the result), and it seems like these endless web serials are just an excuse to do as little editing as possible.

At least a 10:1 ratio. I correct obvious errors as I'm writing, and then do a final edit pass in RR.

I would think that I'm a good writer, and less prone to error than most on RR, so I don't need it all that much.

How long is one chapter of RI? "It's got like 3000 chapters it's this huge" doesn't say much when chapters in web fiction can range from 2 screen heights to 10k words.

About 3-5k words as far as I can tell.

How long is RI going on for? This sounds like a full time 996 job.

You've still got a bit left of RI. Watch out for some 4D chess coming up.

I remember trying my hand at litrpg, only to get a harshly stratified autocracy ruled by people who hoard all the combat classes. Worlds where individual combat power is wildly unequal should have wildly unequal political power IMO, yet nobody else seems to do this.

You've still got a bit left of RI. Watch out for some 4D chess coming up.

I'd be lying if I wasn't already blown away by what the author managed to pull off already, 4D chess undersells it, I'd have an aneurysm trying to keep all the plots straight in my head, and he makes it look easy.

I remember trying my hand at litrpg, only to get a harshly stratified autocracy ruled by people who hoard all the combat classes. Worlds where individual combat power is wildly unequal should have wildly unequal political power IMO, yet nobody else seems to do this.

I'm pretty sure you just described most Xianxia haha, I'm sure there must be a couple that are litrpgs too.

If that excerpt gave you the impression that my fic is one, that isn't actually the case! To skip over quite a bit, the "litrpg" mechanics the protagonist is interacting with here are the decayed and decrepit remnants of when this Simulation was more akin to say, WoW, a system that has basically been left to rot while the rest of the world switched to Xianxia Cultivation for millions of years.

It's played for laughs, since pretty much nothing works, and even a prestige class like what Isaac claims is rather underpowered to put it lightly.

Well Red Lotus has been playing 5D Chess with Multiverse Time Travel the whole time but FY is about to pull some moves too.

I'm pretty sure you just described most Xianxia haha

Yeah, it was one of those incomplete ideas I had before I even got into xianxia, working from Western litrpg stuff where things are surprisingly egalitarian. One of my thoughts was that a precursor civilization would engineer factories to level up its people (like how in minecraft there are mob farms). After the precursors wipe themselves out (who would've guessed that high levels and a physics system dependent on killing people are destabilizing) we get dungeons. I like having organic reasons for things to exist rather than the whole 'dungeon core' trope collection welded onto medieval Europe fantasy setting. Alternate physics should mean alternate politics and alternate culture, which xianxia tends to get right despite its other flaws.

Why the spoiler dude?? It's unmarked too, not that spoiler marks even work for me.

How is that a spoiler? The moment people are first introduced to Red Lotus, it's made clear that he's a time traveller, that's his whole gig. Plus FY is constantly organizing various schemes. It's not specific to say 'oh you should watch carefully for upcoming schemes from the number 1 schemer.' Anyway, don't go on the subreddit if you're this conscious of spoilers.

Bad:

"By the way, in your world, do they have wizards?" He asked earnestly.

Good:

"By the way, in your world, do they have wizards?" he asked earnestly.

Nonstandard, but useful as an illustrative tool:

"By the way, in your world, do they have wizards [he asked earnestly]?"

I will take this opportunity to rant that I am really tired of bad English. I'm approximately 85 percent of the way through (my scraped EPUB of) Twig, and I find it extremely annoying that Wildbow—a person who has written literally millions of words—(1) makes exactly the same mistake that I explained above, (2) always uses a single hyphen followed by a space (not even a pair of hyphens!) rather than an em dash, and (3) can't tell the difference between subject and object (actual quote: "just behind Jessie and I"). At work, several of my coworkers—a pseudo-subordinate of mine (Cantonese), my boss (Vietnamese), and my boss's boss (Sri Lankan)—are ELLs who routinely verge on sending gibberish in their emails, and I have an "English tutoring" folder on my work computer to catalog the literally dozens of helpful corrections that I have emailed to the first two of them over the past six months (for which they have thanked me).

Is your issue that it's supposed to be "behind Jessie and me/myself"? I'd assume it is a deliberate archaism.

That's (possibly) my autocorrect being annoying, capitalizing the H in he after the use of quotes IIRC.

I'm not overly fussed about minor issues like that, if you think that's annoying, wait till you see what translated Xianxia often looks like!

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