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Book review: There Is No Antimemetics Division

stephendiehl.com

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Re: Book review: There Is No Antimemetics Division

#101

Post by mkeeter »

throw4847285 wrote: post #64

This review is just a plot synopsis. There are no quotes from the book to give me a sense of the quality of the writing. The review feels targeted at somebody who is already bought into the premise, not somebody from the outside who wants to know if "There Is No Antimemetics Division" is a good book or not. In that sense, it totally fails as a book review.

The review is also heavily LLM-inflected, to the point of being distracting.

GPTZero gives it a 100% chance of being AI generated, and I've found that these tools may give false negatives from a well-prompted model, but false positives are rare.

If you are looking to tune your intuition for AI-written text, here's an interesting list of their quirks (ironically provided as a Claude skill for removing those quirks from emitted text):

https://github.com/stephenturner/skill-deslop/blob/main/refe...

Re: Book review: There Is No Antimemetics Division

#104

Post by [deleted] »

rapnie wrote: post #86
swanson wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried making this joke to the author when the book was released ("I purchased the book, but the link just took me to an empty page") and, unfortunately, they didn't get it and tried to give me customer support

What are you talking about? Did you perhaps cross-post by accident to the wrong thread?

[deleted]

Re: Book review: There Is No Antimemetics Division

#107

Post by ByThyGrace »

mjburgess wrote: post #56

I dislike the ending, at least of v2. In it, the author basically gives a fleshed out (christian, neoplatonist) metaphysics to the world he's created which basically amounts to: heaven exists, humans win against the devil, etc. And the ending itself is a self-conscious version of an ascension narrative. It's a very 90deg turn ending to a book otherwise more interested in a world in which heaven is never accessible.

I don't think this is much of a spoiler: in Ra (same author) you get just what you're looking for and, ironically, that's with another revised ending. Even with the christianic subtext, which is at times manifest. I've read both and the writing is overall superior. As it should be, antimemetics is his first work I think? Writers have historically become good from mere practise.

Re: Book review: There Is No Antimemetics Division

#108

Post by joombaga »

krackers wrote: post #102

Are there any real-life examples of antimemes? How would antimemes even propagate given that they'd "die out" immediately?

Maybe not exactly an antimeme, but my mind went to biology. Measles can destroy memory B-cells and T-cells, causing immunological amnesia.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1002885

Re: Book review: There Is No Antimemetics Division

#109

Post by throw4847285 »

nusl wrote: post #106
frankfrank13 wrote: post #3

I have not read this book. I've been avoiding it for a while for the dumbest possible reason, which is that I only associate this book with SWE's.

It's worth a read, at least the first half, just because it's really fun.

Exactly what a SWE would say.

Re: Book review: There Is No Antimemetics Division

#110

Post by comboy »

throw4847285 wrote: post #64

This review is just a plot synopsis. There are no quotes from the book to give me a sense of the quality of the writing. The review feels targeted at somebody who is already bought into the premise, not somebody from the outside who wants to know if "There Is No Antimemetics Division" is a good book or not. In that sense, it totally fails as a book review.

It's not a well-written book. It's an interesting book (more like a story).
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