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Flowers for Algernon (1965) [pdf]

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Re: Flowers for Algernon (1965) [pdf]

#121

Post by tyingq »

sandworm101 wrote: post #120

I always hated this story. For me, the underlying theme is one of class and social structure. The illiterate man is lifted above his situation by science. He is then hammered back down. This is a story about how science cannot change the underlying "natural" state of a person. It is a lesson for scientists about not messing with god-given realities. I also don't like the linking of one's job to one's intelligence. Th…

Everybody has their own take. There's a way to interpret the book where you see that traits like kindness might be more important than intelligence.

Re: Flowers for Algernon (1965) [pdf]

#122

Post by [deleted] »

sandworm101 wrote: post #120

I always hated this story. For me, the underlying theme is one of class and social structure. The illiterate man is lifted above his situation by science. He is then hammered back down. This is a story about how science cannot change the underlying "natural" state of a person. It is a lesson for scientists about not messing with god-given realities. I also don't like the linking of one's job to one's intelligence. Th…

[deleted]

Re: Flowers for Algernon (1965) [pdf]

#123

Post by bdowling »

sandworm101 wrote: post #120

I always hated this story. For me, the underlying theme is one of class and social structure. The illiterate man is lifted above his situation by science. He is then hammered back down. This is a story about how science cannot change the underlying "natural" state of a person. It is a lesson for scientists about not messing with god-given realities. I also don't like the linking of one's job to one's intelligence. Th…

> The opposite to Flowers for Algernon is Captain America.

They're not opposites, they're orthogonal. Flowers for Algernon is a science fiction story. Science fiction stories are usually (always?) about how the human experience is affected by some hypothetical new technology. The new technology often has a fatal flaw or unexpected consequences. The stories are often tragic.

Captain America, on the other hand, is not science fiction. Captain America is a comic superhero and his stories are usually (always?) heroic adventures. Heroic adventures follow a predictable pattern beginning with a call to adventure and ending with the hero returning home having slain the dragon.

Re: Flowers for Algernon (1965) [pdf]

#124

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

sandworm101 wrote: post #120

I always hated this story. For me, the underlying theme is one of class and social structure. The illiterate man is lifted above his situation by science. He is then hammered back down. This is a story about how science cannot change the underlying "natural" state of a person. It is a lesson for scientists about not messing with god-given realities. I also don't like the linking of one's job to one's intelligence. Th…

Interesting interpretation. To me, this book has nothing to do with science. There is very little science mentioned and even the wonder that changes Charlie is not mentioned in any detail that I remember.

His change could have easily been caused by something else besides science like a head injury that magically and temporarily reversed his handicap. And the story would have still been beautiful.

It’s more like a literary device; deus ex machina followed later by diabolus ex machina.

Re: Flowers for Algernon (1965) [pdf]

#125

Post by cowtools »

sandworm101 wrote: post #120

I always hated this story. For me, the underlying theme is one of class and social structure. The illiterate man is lifted above his situation by science. He is then hammered back down. This is a story about how science cannot change the underlying "natural" state of a person. It is a lesson for scientists about not messing with god-given realities. I also don't like the linking of one's job to one's intelligence. Th…

I don't think there is a single point in this comment that I agree with.

>This is a story about how science cannot change the underlying "natural" state of a person.

I don't think that's necessarily true. In the setting of the story, current the state of the art prohibits this. But It doesn't really comment on whether that's a fundamental limitation. The purpose of having the protagonist descend back into retardation is to force the reader to empathize more - and perhaps reconcile with their own age-related descent in intelligence in their own life.

> I also don't like the linking of one's job to one's intelligence. The two are rarely directly related.

Really. So for example, in this story there was the retarded boy working as a dishwasher at the diner. Do you think that portrayal is completely unrealistic because in the real world retarded people usually become astronauts, surgeons, or lawyers? I think in the real world you'll find the mentally disabled working menial jobs for little respect or pay.

>The opposite to Flowers for Algernon is Captain America. A weak man is improved by science and goes on to be the champion of his nation: Science overcomes nature and God-given limitations can be overcome by government-backed scientific wonders.

I agree they are quite opposite in the sense that Flowers for Algernon is an endearing short story with commentary on the nature of intelligence, respect and social mobility, while Captain America is a marketable franchise designed to sell comics and merchandise to children. Of course Captain America is simpler and more optimistic than a short story: Like most comic books, I can only assume it doesn't convey any actual message besides "good guys always win".

Re: Flowers for Algernon (1965) [pdf]

#126

Post by fritztastic »

We read this in 8th grade, and I remember connecting to it very deeply. I think I related to it because when I was very young I was mostly oblivious to the people around me, I lived in my own imagination a lot of the time- probably to escape the traumatic reality I was living in. When I grew older I began to be more aware of people around me, at first I I was very naïve but slowly grew to realize some of the people I sought validation and acceptance from were cruel, sometimes through indifference, negligence, or abusiveness. I cared very deeply about many things, and I used to believe this was something everyone felt. It was an incredibly painful experience to invest so much effort in order to begin to interact with others, only to find a reality drastically different than what I had when I was sheltered in my mind. Reading that story resonated with my sense of loss, alienation, and being ridiculed for things that were beyond my control. There were times I wished I could hide in my mind and regain my ability to tune everything out, and the story spoke to me very personally when I read it even though it wasn't until many uears later that I understood why.

Re: Flowers for Algernon (1965) [pdf]

#127

Post by timoth3y »

This book really it me hard when I read it as a kid. When I re-read it as an adult it was still amazing and a very different, more subtle work.

I think the reason it resonates so much with the young adult audience is that Charlie represents the life they are just starting to go though.

We all start out helpless, ignorant, and dependent. We grow into our primes and achieve amazing things. We then lose our abilities and facilities as we age and become dependent again.

But through all these changes, who am I? What makes me a good and worthwhile person when my abilities change and no one else really understands?

Re: Flowers for Algernon (1965) [pdf]

#128

Post by _qfi9 »

gwern wrote: post #92
SamBam wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I adore most of Chiang's work, but Understand is one of my least favorites. Fun premise, yes, but it reads to me like much less mature sci-fi, like something written by a teen about what being super-smart would feel like.

That's the problem with any superintelligence story; they are by definition hard to write without being superintelligent. As Vinge was famously told, "you can't write this story. No one can." If a chimpanzee could write a story about a human expert of any sort, the other chimpanzees wouldn't understand it: it would either be gibberish, or dumbed down to superficial analogies that give an illusion of understanding. ("…

we can know certain things about things that are smarter than us.

perhaps even smarter than a post singularity intelligence, for instance,

we are "computationally" equivalent to a turing machine: a tape with symbols on it and a head that reads and writes symbols to the tape according to rules.

the natural generalization of a turing machine to infinity would be a hyper turing machine: an infinitely wide tape and infinitely many heads.

if one were to employ some kind of godel numbering esque scheme, most (the overwhelming majority) of the symbols the hyper turing machine used in it's operation/had in it's rule lookup table would correspond to transcendental numbers, e.g. pi or e (cuz their cardinality is larger than natural numbers).

The alphabet our math uses is pretty much all finite. What percent of the axioms and theorems that you know are infinitely long? Shouldn't the overwhelming majority of axioms and theorems be infinitely long (and in particular map onto an uncountable set? (e.g. transcendental numbers).

So a hyper turing machine would be a supra-mathematical entity. But you can pretty much use math to deduce that.

Re: Flowers for Algernon (1965) [pdf]

#129

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

ginnungagap wrote: post #78
djsavvy wrote: post #73

This story hit me hard when I read it as a kid. When I was young, I read another story with a similar emotional texture that I've been trying to find again for years now. It had a mentally challenged boy who worked in a restaurant with a lobster tank in the front, and the boy loved the lobster as a pet and stopped the restaurant staff from killing and serving the lobster. But one day when the boy was gone the lobster…

This is probably enough information for the folks at the Science Fiction & Fantasy Stackexchange ( https://scifi.stackexchange.com/ ) to identify the story, they get similar story identification requests all the time and are crazy good at it. If you do ask make sure to include approximately when you read it and please let me know, I'm curious about your story too now!

Pleas post it in a reply if you find out the name. My son loves lobsters and I’d like to get it for him.

Re: Flowers for Algernon (1965) [pdf]

#130

Post by softcactus »

bgroat wrote: post #112
SamBam wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I adore most of Chiang's work, but Understand is one of my least favorites. Fun premise, yes, but it reads to me like much less mature sci-fi, like something written by a teen about what being super-smart would feel like.

That's wild because it's my exact opposite take. I found it to be one of the most thoughtful explorations of super-intelligence and how it becomes qualitatively different than conventional intelligence. I came away from it thinking, "This is Limitless if it were written by a grownup"

Exactly how I felt. It explores what motivations of a super-intelligence might be in a way that I hadn't seen before.

I understand the commenter's sentiment though--it's difficult to read an earnest story about a super intelligent trans-human because the archetype of "cool and collected super genius" has been done to death and has become cringeworthy.

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