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Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing

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Re: Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing

#21

Post by ayaros »

I've been an ardent compatibilist for a long time, but I had no idea there was even a term for it. I'm grateful to now have additional context on my own belief system - context I didn't even know existed! It's weird because when I try to explain it to people they often don't seem to get it. It's like everyone gets locked into these false dichotomies... they become unable to look past them!

I loved Arrival but never really bothered to look into Story of Your Life or its author. I guess now I have to go and read all of Chiang's work... Stories about consistent fictional science are indeed a rarity. This is also why I like Sam Hughes' work (aka qntm) - he does this pretty well himself.

Re: Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing

#22

Post by alexey-salmin »

avar wrote: post #18
alexey-salmin wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not impossible from a scientific perspective for a planet to be terraformed and seeded with intelligent life by some overly advanced spices (you can say "god-like"). Or to create a simulation with intelligent life in it and to save some resources by starting 6000 years ago from a complex seed state rather than simulating 16 billion years of physics to see the intelligent life emerge or not. That would be rather…

> science is built around making verifiable > predictions but doesn't in fact give any > answers, only theories This is just redefining "theory" and "answer" to the point of meaninglessness. Darwin didn't know a lot of things about evolution or biology, and I'm sure he had questions about some of those things. If you could talk to him today you could give him answers to those questions, and the reason for that is tha…

The point being, a theory only holds "true" until it's superseded by a better theory. Furthermore, multiple conflicting theories can be in use at the same time in the absence of a good unifying theory. In the end science neither says nor cares what is "true", it just looks for theories that are good at predicting stuff.

"Answers" in a common sense are supposed to be "true" and "permanent" or at least that's how I understand the word.

EDIT apparently the comment above got extended, so I'll address some of newer points too.

> You're just implicitly excluding all the parts where religious texts make empirical claims about reality as unimportant or allegory, because religion has already lost those arguments.

No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying all these claims can be as well true in a different (fully consistent and scientific) world. Furthermore, if you assume we live in a simulation then basically anything becomes possible in OUR world too, including Jesus walking on water turned into wine. It's just our simulation overlords had a good sense of humor.

The reason why we don't usually consider simulation theories is not because they're false (this can't be proven), but because they aren't practical and don't predict much. Even if we do live in a simulation, this simulation so far seems to follow some consistent internal "laws" so we can as well study those. Not that it means anything, but helps us to exterminate those who neglect these laws so it's a survivorship bias in action.

Re: Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing

#23

Post by dragonwriter »

alexey-salmin wrote: post #17
lmm wrote: post #15

> Many of his readers, even in their otherwise rave reviews, miss this. Multiple reviewers complain about how the science in his stories are “unrealistic” (e.g. strong Sapir-Whorf is “discredited”). They expected hard science fiction; Chiang was doing something different. Chiang created different universes with internally self-consistent scientific laws, using science fiction and alternative science as a vehicle for…

It's not impossible from a scientific perspective for a planet to be terraformed and seeded with intelligent life by some overly advanced spices (you can say "god-like"). Or to create a simulation with intelligent life in it and to save some resources by starting 6000 years ago from a complex seed state rather than simulating 16 billion years of physics to see the intelligent life emerge or not. That would be rather…

> Religion can explain anything but predicts very little (except for sociological phenomena which it predicts rather well).

No, it doesn't.

I mean, it does the horoscope thing where it makes predictions vague enough that people can retrospectively fit whatever actually happens into them easily, but that's not actually predicting very well.

Re: Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing

#24

Post by dragonwriter »

alexey-salmin wrote: post #22
avar wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> science is built around making verifiable > predictions but doesn't in fact give any > answers, only theories This is just redefining "theory" and "answer" to the point of meaninglessness. Darwin didn't know a lot of things about evolution or biology, and I'm sure he had questions about some of those things. If you could talk to him today you could give him answers to those questions, and the reason for that is tha…

The point being, a theory only holds "true" until it's superseded by a better theory. Furthermore, multiple conflicting theories can be in use at the same time in the absence of a good unifying theory. In the end science neither says nor cares what is "true", it just looks for theories that are good at predicting stuff. "Answers" in a common sense are supposed to be "true" and "permanent" or at least that's how I und…

> "Answers" in a common sense are supposed to be "true" and "permanent"

I would argue that answers are supposed to be useful for the purpose motivating the question.

Q: What is the price of gas? A1: The number of units of some other good or service demanded by a seller in echange for a given quantity of it. A2: about $4.00/gal

A1 is, I would say, both "true" and "permanent". Assuming it is at least approximately accurate, though, A2 is much more of an answer in most cases the question is asked, even though it is at perhaps only approximately and in any case at best transitorily true.

Re: Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing

#25

Post by alexey-salmin »

dragonwriter wrote: post #23
alexey-salmin wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not impossible from a scientific perspective for a planet to be terraformed and seeded with intelligent life by some overly advanced spices (you can say "god-like"). Or to create a simulation with intelligent life in it and to save some resources by starting 6000 years ago from a complex seed state rather than simulating 16 billion years of physics to see the intelligent life emerge or not. That would be rather…

> Religion can explain anything but predicts very little (except for sociological phenomena which it predicts rather well). No, it doesn't. I mean, it does the horoscope thing where it makes predictions vague enough that people can retrospectively fit whatever actually happens into them easily, but that's not actually predicting very well.

Religions are to a big extent codified traditions and many traditions emerged and persisted because they benefited their bearers in one way or another. That's fundamentally different from horoscopes.

Re: Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing

#26

Post by LinchZhang »

root_axis wrote: post #14

Interesting observation. Spoilers -> He does the same thing in Tower of Babel, where the topology of the universe is structured in such a manner that the tower can physically reach "heaven", which ends up being a surprise to the reader and the characters at the same time. Masterful stuff. I want to nitpick two things. On compatibalism, the first definition presented is the correct one, the framing that "you have to m…

I appreciate the nitpicks!

Re #1 It's been several years since I read up on that area of philosophy. I'll need to reread some stuff to decide whether I think the definition I used is a fine enough simplification for sci-fi readers (and, well, myself) vs whether it missed enough nuances that it's essentially misleading.

(Some academic philosophers follow me on substack so maybe they'll also end up correcting me at some point!)

Re #2 ah I don't think of it as "sneaking in". It's more like "this is a view I have, this is a view many of my readers likely also have, given that this is a widely debated topic (as you say) and I'm not going to change anybody's minds on the object level I'm just going to mention it and move on."

Re: Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing

#27

Post by dragonwriter »

alexey-salmin wrote: post #25
dragonwriter wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Religion can explain anything but predicts very little (except for sociological phenomena which it predicts rather well). No, it doesn't. I mean, it does the horoscope thing where it makes predictions vague enough that people can retrospectively fit whatever actually happens into them easily, but that's not actually predicting very well.

Religions are to a big extent codified traditions and many traditions emerged and persisted because they benefited their bearers in one way or another. That's fundamentally different from horoscopes.

> Religions are to a big extent codified traditions and many traditions emerged and persisted because they benefited their bearers in one way or another.

Religions are a lot more than just codified traditions, but yes, some traditions are have benefits. That doesn't mean that the religion as a whole is good at predicting anything, it just means that they occasionally preserve things that are beneficial. But because what is codified is codified without systematic knowledge of what works or how it works, the preservation of benefit is essentially random with weak selective pressure acting in the aggregate of beliefs, and with a very big "past utility is no guarantee of future utility" even on the bits that are useful, because the utility of the tradition may be tied to conditions that are not preserved, while the tradition itself is blindly perserved.

Re: Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing

#28

Post by kmonsen »

alexey-salmin wrote: post #22
avar wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> science is built around making verifiable > predictions but doesn't in fact give any > answers, only theories This is just redefining "theory" and "answer" to the point of meaninglessness. Darwin didn't know a lot of things about evolution or biology, and I'm sure he had questions about some of those things. If you could talk to him today you could give him answers to those questions, and the reason for that is tha…

The point being, a theory only holds "true" until it's superseded by a better theory. Furthermore, multiple conflicting theories can be in use at the same time in the absence of a good unifying theory. In the end science neither says nor cares what is "true", it just looks for theories that are good at predicting stuff. "Answers" in a common sense are supposed to be "true" and "permanent" or at least that's how I und…

The goal of science is to disprove our theories so we can find out if they are true, and hopefully replace them with improved versions.

The goal of religious study is to try to prove that it is not impossible, not that it is a probably reading of what happened. To find some absurd way of reconciling different stories. I have no idea how you can call that an answer.

Re: Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing

#29

Post by lmm »

alexey-salmin wrote: post #17
lmm wrote: post #15

> Many of his readers, even in their otherwise rave reviews, miss this. Multiple reviewers complain about how the science in his stories are “unrealistic” (e.g. strong Sapir-Whorf is “discredited”). They expected hard science fiction; Chiang was doing something different. Chiang created different universes with internally self-consistent scientific laws, using science fiction and alternative science as a vehicle for…

It's not impossible from a scientific perspective for a planet to be terraformed and seeded with intelligent life by some overly advanced spices (you can say "god-like"). Or to create a simulation with intelligent life in it and to save some resources by starting 6000 years ago from a complex seed state rather than simulating 16 billion years of physics to see the intelligent life emerge or not. That would be rather…

> some overly advanced spices (you can say "god-like")

You really can't. They're very different.

> It's not impossible from a scientific perspective for a planet to be terraformed and seeded with intelligent life by some overly advanced spices (you can say "god-like"). Or to create a simulation with intelligent life in it and to save some resources by starting 6000 years ago from a complex seed state rather than simulating 16 billion years of physics to see the intelligent life emerge or not.

True enough. But such a world would be very different from a world in which the bible was literally true, and a world in which the bible is actually literally true is genuinely scientifically impossible. You would have to redefine an unimaginably large number of things and you would still have a world full of impossible contradictions to the point that nothing could be said.

> Take any religious belief and you can build a scientific world where it is true.

You can't, because the beliefs are fundamentally unscientific and self-contradictory. There is no possible world in which the god that actually religious people believe in exists as they believe in him; there are possible worlds in which an entity with approximately the same gross physical properties exists, but such an entity is nothing like the actual religious god.

Re: Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing

#30

Post by LinchZhang »

ayaros wrote: post #21

I've been an ardent compatibilist for a long time, but I had no idea there was even a term for it. I'm grateful to now have additional context on my own belief system - context I didn't even know existed! It's weird because when I try to explain it to people they often don't seem to get it. It's like everyone gets locked into these false dichotomies... they become unable to look past them! I loved Arrival but never r…

OMG I'm so glad this review might have an impact! Please do check out Story of Your Life and then read the other stories!

Without giving too many spoilers away, the short story's plot is simultaneously extremely similar to and extremely different from the movie. YMMV on which one you prefer, fans are divided.

In my experience people who read the short story first prefer the story, and people who watch the movie first prefer the movie. But you might be different! Just read it first and report back what you feel!

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