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The Egg (2009)

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Re: The Egg (2009)

#51

Post by nartho »

jpm_sd wrote: post #24
xutopia wrote: post #13

I can't recommend this author enough. Project Hail Mary and The Martian are amazing works of science fiction. Project Hail Mary is actually amazing as an audiobook.

I enjoyed The Martian (novel and movie) but I didn't care for Artemis or Project Hail Mary. I thought the characters and dialogue were fairly weak, even though the underlying ideas were clever. Also I thought that "main character amnesia" was a frustrating plot device (in PHM). Overall, his authorial voice reminds me a lot of YouTube hosts? Perhaps that's just the cultural moment we're in.

His stories are always extremely clever and he has an insane sense of rythm. But I hate his style, it reads like a giant Reddit post. My wife asked why I kept complaining about this book I couldn't put down.

Re: The Egg (2009)

#52

Post by syncr0 »

pavlov wrote: post #12

I really wish browsers would default to Reader mode for documents like this. It would make "web 1.0" content much more usable, and would encourage people to create simple HTML because the default styling wouldn't look like crap.

You can set Safari to automatically open all web pages in Reader mode. Then for websites you regularly visit and want a non reader mode render, you can whitelist them for that.

Re: The Egg (2009)

#53

Post by agos »

pavlov wrote: post #12

I really wish browsers would default to Reader mode for documents like this. It would make "web 1.0" content much more usable, and would encourage people to create simple HTML because the default styling wouldn't look like crap.

it's literally two clicks

Re: The Egg (2009)

#54

Post by throw310822 »

It's basically the same way you train an LLM, forcing them to reproduce all human writing. You'd have to RLHF the being produced by this egg to avoid him falling in Hitler patterns all the time.

Re: The Egg (2009)

#55

Post by 0xbadc0de5 »

Feels vaguely reminiscent of Scott Adams' "God's Debris" which was also making the rounds in the 00's. Essentially just interesting thought experiments playing with the "what if" idea of a higher power.

Re: The Egg (2009)

#56

Post by wat10000 »

bccdee wrote: post #20
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As old Schop said: "Pleasure is never as pleasant as we expected it to be and pain is always more painful. The pain in the world always outweighs the pleasure. If you don't believe it, compare the respective feelings of two animals, one of which is eating the other." People look to religion and metaphysics for justice and salvation. This poor "Egg" guy is trapped in a trillion-year cycle of pain and injustice. I gues…

That's not true at all though. This is how a baby thinks about a needle. Often pain is less painful than we expect, and pleasure is pleasantly surprising. > The pain in the world always outweighs the pleasure. If you don't believe it, compare the respective feelings of two animals, one of which is eating the other. Getting eaten is the last 5 minutes of a prey animal's life. If you asked that antelope whether those f…

I have a hard time thinking of any kind or quantity of pleasure that would outweigh some of the more horrible fates that some people have had.

Re: The Egg (2009)

#57

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #8

Hah, it's literally Schopenhauer's hell: Humans as both the tormenting demons and as those doing the suffering. In this case, one human -- which further frames suffering as an inescapable, masochistic cycle. "You were victimizing yourself" says the demiurge. That everything is predetermined and that time is nonlinear is also something that should trouble every contemplative person. It's basically a devil's brew of ni…

>it plays out over a trillion or so years

At least the duration is short.

Re: The Egg (2009)

#58

Post by fogbeak »

Reading this on 4chan in high school is what got me into science fiction. Brings back memories! Very happy that Andy Weir got his due with The Martian.

Re: The Egg (2009)

#59

Post by okonomiyaki3000 »

Just the other day I was thinking this hasn't been posted to HN for a while. I'm glad to see it again. Although I feel no need for religion in my life, I recognize that most people seem to need it. So why not this? I think it's better than any of the other ones.
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