Resurrection by Harry Stottle:
https://www.fullmoon.nu/Resurrection/PrimarySpecies.html
It’s a play made for radio about a scientist who brings his father back to life (digitally) as the first test of “resurrection” technology.
Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?
711–720 of 747 posts
Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?
#712Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're not supposed to spoil it. The whole point of these puzzles is the joy and knowledge you gets from solving them on your own. Publishing the answers is selfish.
Well, I for one don't consider this a satisfying solution (you could argue it does not count as a solution at all). How is the host supposed to evaluate the future? As I said in another comment, for that the host either needs iteration or an oracle, and both of those are missing from the premise of the question. It's like asking riddle where the solution is "Use a time-machine" when no time-machine is mentioned in th…
> How is the host supposed to evaluate the future?
I don't see how "evaluation of the future" is relevant. The person hosting the game has laid out the conditions for his actions. If you say "you will not give me prize B in response to this statement":
1) If the host were to give you prize B, that would be a contradiction, as that would make your statement false, so you should have received C.
2) If the host were to give you prize C, that would be a contradiction, as that would make your statement true; per the rules, you should not have received prize C (or logically equivalent: you should have received one of A or B).
3) If the host were to give you prize A, there is no contradiction.
The only action the host can make, while honoring the rules they laid out, is to give you prize A. The host, assuming they're decent at logic (which is a premise of such problems), would consider the above and realize that they must give you prize A. There's no need for reading the future; they must merely know what actions they are permitted to make given the rules of the game, and given only one valid course of action, they must take take that action.
Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?
#713Gödel, Escher, Bach: by Douglas Hofstadter.
Surely expanded my brain. But then again I was 16 and stuck on a train for 3 days and it was my only entertainment.
Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?
#714Super serious question. Of the 278 comments that have been posted to this thread in the last 8 hours, has anyone suggested a single female author? I looked for a while and saw exactly zero. Isn’t that kind of notable?
I thought sex was a social construct?
Social constructs are real, but somewhat arbitrary. There's no genetic difference between Catholics and Protestants. If you were Catholic as a child, you could become Protestant as an adult.
Religion is socially constructed, but its differences still matter to people. Someone could legitimately ask why there were no Catholic US presidents prior to JFK.
Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?
#715Mere Christianity , by C. S. Lewis. Any of his nonfiction works have a style of writing that I seldom find. He has a dedication to reason and a step-by-step approach. The Elements of Style , by William Strunk and E. B. White. I liked writing since I learned how to. I didn't find this book until I was 17, and it unlocked me to write in a way that better helped others. The Language Instinct , by Steven Pinker. I guess…
Whenever I find a copy of Elements of Style, I chuck it in the trash. Geoff Pullum, a revered linguist, calls it "the Nasty Book". He explained, in an essay that is easy to find online, how its chief effect is to make people insecure about their writing. The book's message is, "Here are the rules. You will have to break them to write well. But you aren't good enough to know when." In fact the rules are not rules anyw…
> its chief effect is to make people insecure about their writing
That's the opposite of its effect on me.
> The book's message is, "Here are the rules. You will have to break them to write well. But you aren't good enough to know when."
I discerned no such put-down.
> In fact the rules are not rules anywhere but in the imagination of White and his acolytes. No admired writer of English knows them, never mind obeys them.
The gist of the book is the same as other books, such as The King's English, On Writing Well, and A Sense of Style. Stephen King praises the book in his own book, On Writing. I've also read a few articles on writing that say the same basic thing.
The gist of these books is to write in service of the reader (as opposed to your ego) and to work hard at it (as opposed to being lazy and just "letting it all hang out" from the first draft), as it is a craft, like carpentry. Specifically, try to avoid wasting words, try to use the best word at each point, and try to order your words (and sentences and paragraphs) in the best way for the reader's understanding.
There are some minor rules and preferences that perhaps Geoff Pullum is pouncing on, something like, "A clever horse is a good-natured one, not an ingenious one." I can see clearly that that is an archaism and take it for what it's worth. After all, the book is about 100 years old. But any writer should know that when you get down to that level of resolution, the detail shifts a bit in the quantum foam. Things on that level vary a bit from one decade to another, from one region to another. And language is like a craft, in that there are some rules that can be followed 90% of time, but it is not mathematics. You cannot distill a formula. I see Geoff Pullum taking it as black and white, but English does not submit to such simplification.
Perhaps Strunk was more black and white, but White seems a bit looser, and I think their combination balances each other out nicely. It reminds me that no rule is absolute. However, for the vast majority of writers, they would benefit from at least trying to follow a lot of them!
> The book presents a profoundly ignorant picture ofthe English language. You cannot become a good writer shackled to Strunk and White.
For 80% of the writing I read in books, magazines, articles, etc., they suffer from the kinds of problems addressed in the Elements of Style. There may be other kinds of problems in a minority of writing, but far and away most writing suffers heavily from wordiness, vagueness, clumsy construction. I won't fault someone for incorrectly calling a horse "clever," but now I see why most writing tires me out so much --- and I can rewrite it in my head to be clearer.
Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?
#716Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you for posting a bookshop.org link
Whats special about that site if you dont mind my asking?
Bookshop.com sells books from independent book stores and gives the profits of the sales to your local store: https://bookshop.org/pages/about
Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?
#717"Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life" by Rory Sutherland Explains why we choose brands over cheaper alternatives, why we're willing to pay a lot more to lock in a deal, why we hate registering before buying the thing (but are more than happy to do so right after), why Sony removed the record button from the first Walkman, and much more. This book forever changed t…
The food rule works for anything, but Detroit. https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2774
It actually works for a lot of stuff even if it's not food. Chrysler's "Corinthian leather" marketing comes to mind.
Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?
#718"Permutation City" by Greg Egan is mind-bending in a way similar to The Matrix, except taken up a few notches. Explores the consequences of consciousness being just a pattern. Would it continue if the pattern is paused? Seems yes, since we survive being unconscious. So we move in space and time, but still consciousness feels continuous. What if you pause it, destroy it, recreate it somewhere else. Would it not contin…
It's either this or another Greg Egan book that has simulated people reprogramming their own consciousness. Changing their thought processes, personal motivations, and memories. I think he goes into some depth on how they can do that safely and what the implications are. One character programs himself to be obsessed with carpentry and spends lifetimes of subjective simulated time trying to craft the perfect table, bu…
Also I shouldn't have said "nobody else has tackled that idea", I am sure it has come up somewhere else. I am just thinking of recent examples like Black Mirror or the new Upload show on Amazon, that IMO miss opportunities to fully explore the implications of simulated minds. Stuff like that would be very difficult to film though...
Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?
#719"Permutation City" by Greg Egan is mind-bending in a way similar to The Matrix, except taken up a few notches. Explores the consequences of consciousness being just a pattern. Would it continue if the pattern is paused? Seems yes, since we survive being unconscious. So we move in space and time, but still consciousness feels continuous. What if you pause it, destroy it, recreate it somewhere else. Would it not contin…
It's either this or another Greg Egan book that has simulated people reprogramming their own consciousness. Changing their thought processes, personal motivations, and memories. I think he goes into some depth on how they can do that safely and what the implications are. One character programs himself to be obsessed with carpentry and spends lifetimes of subjective simulated time trying to craft the perfect table, bu…
Sounds like either Permutation City or Schild's Ladder. Greg tackles a lot of these mind-body ideas that are really intriguing.
Re: Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?
#720Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whenever I find a copy of Elements of Style, I chuck it in the trash. Geoff Pullum, a revered linguist, calls it "the Nasty Book". He explained, in an essay that is easy to find online, how its chief effect is to make people insecure about their writing. The book's message is, "Here are the rules. You will have to break them to write well. But you aren't good enough to know when." In fact the rules are not rules anyw…
> its chief effect is to make people insecure about their writing That's the opposite of its effect on me. > The book's message is, "Here are the rules. You will have to break them to write well. But you aren't good enough to know when." I discerned no such put-down. > In fact the rules are not rules anywhere but in the imagination of White and his acolytes. No admired writer of English knows them, never mind obeys t…
There are plenty of absolute rules in English. White didn't know them, and you don't know them, but neither of you ever breaks them, or is even tempted to.
If you need a book to tell you to use the best word, or to put your words in order, it means you need far more help than you can get from a book.