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@ESYudkowsky: Remember when you were a kid and thought you might have psychic powers, so you dealt yourself face-down playing cards and tried to guess whether they were red or black, and recorded your accuracy rate over several batches of tries?

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And then remember how you had absolutely no idea to do stats at that age, so you stayed confused for a while longer?

Apologies for the usage of the japanese; but it is a very apt description: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chūnibyō,

  • maol@awful.systemsEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    No matter where he went he would start a cult, wouldn’t he. His belief in his own greatness is too strong. If it was the 1920s he’d be running a spiritualist church or something, if it was the 1970s he’d be running an LSD church or something, but unfortunately it’s the here and now and he’s running a computer church.

      • maol@awful.systemsEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        Innit. Any word on him having links to satanists? At least those 50s cults inspired some interesting art. Can the same be said for the wonkish cult of EA?

        • kuna@awful.systemsEnglish
          3·
          1 year ago

          Greg Egan was lampooning them in Zendegi and Schild’s Ladder for what is worth, and also Crystal Nights contains the following banger:

          You know what they say the modern version of Pascal’s Wager is? Sucking up to as many Transhumanists as possible, just in case one of them turns into God. Perhaps your motto should be ‘Treat every chatterbot kindly, it might turn out to be the deity’s uncle.’

          Interestingly, the posthuman worlds in some of Egan’s books do resemble longtermist wet dreams somewhat, the crucial difference being the lack of superintelligence.

          • self@awful.systemsMEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            it’s weird I found out about Diaspora (also a really good book) from the rat-adjacent crowd posting excerpts on the orange site, but Egan keeps sneering at that portion of his fan base in his books

            • gerikson@awful.systemsEnglish
              1·
              1 year ago

              I tried reading one Egan book (Incandescence) and had to give up because it was 90% infodump. Glad to see he’s mocking rats though.

              • self@awful.systemsMEnglish
                1·
                1 year ago

                god damn, maybe my internalized ideal of a sci fi author is Asimov but not a shithead? depressing. I need better sci-fi

                • gerikson@awful.systemsEnglish
                  1·
                  1 year ago

                  no, the fault is mine. He’s written tons, I tried this and bounced off it. I might take a look at Diaspora

                  • kuna@awful.systemsEnglish
                    2·
                    1 year ago

                    Quarantine was one of the least infodumpy books of his. Also the short stories, though they’re a mixed bag. Avoid the Othogonal trilogy and Dichronauts then, I’ve liked them a lot personally, but they’re even more infodumpy than Incandescent.

                    My one gripe with Greg Egan is that he just loves to pause a plot to unsubtly rant about something only vaguely related to the plot (usually religion, superstition, or channeling Sokal on postmodernism). I even agree with him on many of this, but god damn. The worst offender is Distress I think; which is a shame as the whole concept is interesting, the refutation of solipsism near the end is touching, and ancom islanders fending off an invasion of ancap mercs on Big Biotech payroll is glorious.