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Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing

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Re: Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing

#31

Post by alexey-salmin »

dragonwriter wrote: post #27
alexey-salmin wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

> 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

But you agree this must be much better than random? Evolutionary pressure on species is also rather weak: unfit specimen survive and fit specimen die due to chance all the time. But look where it got us when averaged over long periods of time.

I don't buy the "systematic knowledge of what works or how it works" part. That's what NLP scientists used to say about neural nets while building monstrous systems based on "systematic knowledge of grammar". You definitely don't have to understand "how it works" to be able to make good predictions.

Re: Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing

#32

Post by alexey-salmin »

kmonsen wrote: post #28
alexey-salmin wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point being, a theory only holds "true" until it's superseded by a better theory.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.

Well these "answers", whether absurd or not, were good enough for societies to live by them and survive for millennia.

Furthermore, even though you can argue that science can give some answers, it definitely under-delivers on questions like "what is good and evil" or "why you should have kids". Some of those are covered by the "humanism" neoreligion, some of them aren't. This whole experiment is very modern, it's not clear what are long-term survival rates of societies that completely give up on religions in a classical sense. It could turn out that societies that believe in nonsense have an edge over the ones that don't, after all this matches our experience all the way up until the 20th century.

Re: Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing

#33

Post by alexey-salmin »

lmm wrote: post #29
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…

> 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 simu…

> 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.

Why not? I don't think it's likely and I definitely don't build my life under an assumption that this is true.

However I just can't see how this can be ruled out by scientific means. Our world doesn't have to follow any laws at all, this whole thing can be a bad dream of a sleeping giant.

Re: Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing

#34

Post by teekert »

Nitpick (and overall I agree with tfa): "In Exhalation, thermodynamics appear to work differently". I'd say it works the same, but in a very simplified universe, so it gives you a much better understanding of the concept. Which is again, pretty genius.

Oh and "I think he doesn’t understand the power of this singularity-level technology he just introduced." Not addressed in tfa but there is one story where writing is first introduced in a society, and before that they had 2 concepts of truth: "The real truth" and "What all parties find convenient". So powerful, I think we do this more that we think, see also that story about that guy that needs coming to terms with his own memory.

Read Ted Chiang people. Any new book of his is an insta-buy for me. I think Greg Egan is up there with Ted Chiang btw, his stories are much longer but still have this high level of scientific and thoroughly structured imagination.

Re: Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing

#35

Post by alexey-salmin »

dragonwriter wrote: post #24
alexey-salmin wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 accu…

In that sense yes, I agree that science gives good answers.

Re: Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing

#36

Post by ayaros »

LinchZhang wrote: post #30
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…

I mean, I'm a bit biased towards Denis Villeneuve. The man is literally the modern embodiment of Stanley Kubrick and everything he stood for. His films contain everything that's lacking in modern cinema - decent plots, good writing, slower pacing, artful framing and composition of shots, a dedication to hard sci-fi, respect for source material, very careful attention to lighting and sound design, miniatures so thoughtfully combined with CGI you don't even notice them because it all blends together so seamlessly, as special effects should... I could go on forever. I worship the ground he walks on.

With that said, trying to compare the two would be like trying to compare apples and oranges. Films and prose are two separate mediums. Some things which work well in one don't work in the other. It's like the difference between 2001 the film vs. 2001 the book - perhaps my favorite example since they were simultaneously written and directed as counterparts to each other (as opposed to one being based on the other, as is usually the case).

Re: Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing

#39

Post by simpaticoder »

LinchZhang wrote: post #10
simpaticoder wrote: post #2

Ted Chiang does love to explore the counter-factual with empathy and openness where he somehow manages to take himself out of the story in the admirable Virginia Wolfe sense. The OP misses the biting critique hidden in these tales. For example Omphalos, Hell Is the Absence of God, and Tower of Babylon, can all be read as a devastating critique of religion. They all clearly articulate what the world would be like if c…

Thank you for the valuable and constructive comment! I just didn't feel like discussing the satire angle was very interesting! In the article: > In Omphalos, Young Earth Creationism is empirically true2. Astronomers can only see light from stars 6,000 light-years away. Fossilized trees have centers with no rings. The first God-created humans lack belly buttons. The scientists in that story keep discovering multiple i…

TBH I'm glad you left it out! It's an uncomfortable aspect to his stories. His narration hovers above the action with such perfect grace... The satirical element, or its implication, somehow mars that perfection. It is probably better left unsaid by critics and admirers, and left to the individual reader. In truth I shouldn't have mentioned it.

Re: Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing

#40

Post by adaml_623 »

simpaticoder wrote: post #2

Ted Chiang does love to explore the counter-factual with empathy and openness where he somehow manages to take himself out of the story in the admirable Virginia Wolfe sense. The OP misses the biting critique hidden in these tales. For example Omphalos, Hell Is the Absence of God, and Tower of Babylon, can all be read as a devastating critique of religion. They all clearly articulate what the world would be like if c…

I think OP was incorrect in writing, "thermodynamics appear to work differently", in Exhalation.

I think the thermodynamics works the same and you've nailed it by describing it as hermetically sealed perfection. It's a simpler world where a self-aware being can see and almost feel the march of entropy and their own brief existence being part of that.

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