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Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing

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Re: Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing

#131

Post by alexey-salmin »

kmonsen wrote: post #94
alexey-salmin wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slavery made a lot of economic sense prior to the industrial revolution. If you consider "good and evil" as a set of norms that help society to thrive (as in outcompete other societies for resources) then it's not surprising that slavery went from good to bad as the technology progressed. That's the only remotely rational view of it that I'm aware of. "Remotely" because without some kind of religion it doesn't follow…

I do think it’s possible that God and evil are a set of norms that help society (or actually their leaders) thrive, but are presented as universal values. I think there is a huge distinction to what it’s good for the average person in society vs what is good for the rulers, and it is unclear which one of those you mean. Most religions are here to support the rulers.

> I think there is a huge distinction to what it’s good for the average person in society vs what is good for the rulers, and it is unclear which one of those you mean.

I mean it in the most brutal sense, maximizing replication and persistence of religion bearers (you can say average person in society).

In a short term religions can benefit current rulers, but in a long term selection must be geared towards survival of societies and cultures as a whole, otherwise they wouldn't have lived into the modern age.

Re: Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing

#132

Post by jebarker »

gowld wrote: post #117
jebarker wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something that helped me grok Compatibilism (I think…) is that there’s actually two layered ideas. The first layer is practical: there is a sense of freedom that is based on your actions and apparent choices being determined by your internal state and not just the state of the outside world. Similarly, that allows for a practical definition of responsibility. The second layer is metaphysical: because of the first lay…

Compatibilism is the belief we are only characters in a story, but at least we can enjoy the show. Put another way, we should pretend to have free will, because if we are pre-determined, we don't have a choice anyway.

Honestly, I don’t find that explanation helpful or accurate. I don’t think Compatibilism says we need to pretend we have free will. It says we do have free will, just not the metaphysical kind that most people want.

Re: Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing

#133

Post by jfengel »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #92
graemep wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Showing that flat earth beliefs or YEC are false is hardly a devastating critique of religion per se. His own explanation of Hell is The Absence of God seems to suggest otherwise too. "He also said that the novelette examines the role of faith in religion, and suggests that if God undeniably existed, then faith would no longer be applicable." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_Is_the_Absence_of_God#Bac...

> "if God undeniably existed, then faith would no longer be applicable." I kind of see both sides of that. On the "agree" side, I saw a quote somewhere that said, "that's why it's called 'faith' instead of 'reading comprehension'." If it were that cut and dried, then it would just be a matter of objectively evaluating the evidence, without even any "probably". On the "disagree" side, the point of faith isn't really t…

Can you elaborate on the need for forgiveness? Forgiveness for what and by whom?

Re: Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing

#134

Post by AnimalMuppet »

pegasus wrote: post #120
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "if God undeniably existed, then faith would no longer be applicable." I kind of see both sides of that. On the "agree" side, I saw a quote somewhere that said, "that's why it's called 'faith' instead of 'reading comprehension'." If it were that cut and dried, then it would just be a matter of objectively evaluating the evidence, without even any "probably". On the "disagree" side, the point of faith isn't really t…

The dichotomy you describe only works with a rudimentary notion of faith, which might be better referred to as belief or superstition. It goes along with the image of God as a being, when God is better understood as Being itself. A deeper understanding of faith implies trust, a trust which one might not be conscious of but necessarily underlies and sustains any genuine love. The "you" of God cannot be put in oppositi…

If you think that the works of C.S. Lewis support "God is our true nature, the real 'me'", then you have seriously misread him.

Re: Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing

#135

Post by dragonwriter »

graemep wrote: post #98
dragonwriter wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Horoscopes are not a religious belief. Saying that religious predictions use the same style of vagueness that allows people to retrospectively reconstruct them to match facts as horoscopes is not a claim that horoscopes are a religious belief. > The majority of atheists globally believe in astrology Even assuming this is true, what relevance does it have to the discussion?

> Saying that religious predictions What religious predictions? Religions do not generally make many predictions.

> What religious predictions? Religions do not generally make many predictions.

Religions tend to not make a lot of predictions, but they do make some (there's kind of an inverse relation between size and durability of religion and the number and specificity of predictions, though.)

But, if they didn't make any, they wouldn't have a special word for it ("prophecy").

Re: Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing

#136

Post by root_axis »

jebarker wrote: post #132
gowld wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compatibilism is the belief we are only characters in a story, but at least we can enjoy the show. Put another way, we should pretend to have free will, because if we are pre-determined, we don't have a choice anyway.

Honestly, I don’t find that explanation helpful or accurate. I don’t think Compatibilism says we need to pretend we have free will. It says we do have free will, just not the metaphysical kind that most people want.

I'd add that generally, compatibalists don't believe that libertarian free will is the kind that most people want.

Most people believe in free will, most people also believe that their actions follow from prior causes, and most people also believe in moral desert, so most people are definitionally compatibalists.

The typical framing where people are asked to go back in time and imagine redoing past events without memory of the future pumps their intuition for time travel fiction where doing things differently is the entire point of the scenario. If you ask people "if everything happened exactly as it happened, could you alter the past to change the future?" most people would say no.

Re: Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing

#137

Post by root_axis »

NeutralCrane wrote: post #129
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 didn’t really take Tower of Babylon as a “devastating critique of religion”, (or the other stories for that matter). SPOILERS In the story they successfully build a tower to the base of heaven and breakthrough, only to find themselves to have looped back to Earth. The implication I took from this is that heaven and earth are one and the same. This isn’t necessarily a refutation of religion or God, and in fact align…

Agreed. The main character even remarks at the end of the story that the apparent cylindrical topology of the world (the physical explanation of how the world loops in on itself) is a marvel of God's design, and that the human trial of uncovering the nature of that design draws them closer to God. It struck me as a very ecumenical tone, not anti-religious.

Re: Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing

#138

Post by jebarker »

root_axis wrote: post #136
jebarker wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I don’t find that explanation helpful or accurate. I don’t think Compatibilism says we need to pretend we have free will. It says we do have free will, just not the metaphysical kind that most people want.

I'd add that generally, compatibalists don't believe that libertarian free will is the kind that most people want. Most people believe in free will, most people also believe that their actions follow from prior causes, and most people also believe in moral desert, so most people are definitionally compatibalists. The typical framing where people are asked to go back in time and imagine redoing past events without mem…

Great point - I shouldn’t have suggested what most people want, that’s always dangerous

Re: Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing

#139

Post by neilparikh »

overfeed wrote: post #101

I love Ted Chiang and re-read his stories every few years. Most of author's criticisms arise from their refusal to accept that Chiang's stories are mostly science fantasy[1][2], and not some third option. Most/all of the stories primarily focus on characters and relationships on the macro and micro. In each story, the gimmick(tm) is thoroughly examined and extrapolated in an internally-consistant way, but that is exc…

I think you’re using the typical aesthetic definition of fantasy vs. sci-fi. You’re right that under that one, Tower of Babylon would be considered fantasy.

Ted Chiang has an alternate definition though, I prefer that one to be honest. His definition is about whether there are certain “special people” to whom the general laws of the universe don’t apply [0]. Under that definition, even what we would colloquially call magic (ex. turning lead to gold) would be called sci-fi, as long as everyone could do it; once you have that, you can do things like mechanize it and make factories to do it at scale, and there’s where you get the interesting second order problems.

Under that definition, I think Tower of Babylon is better considered sci-fi, because there are no “special people”. The new rules of the universe also lead interesting second order effects: the tower gets so tall that entire families live in the tower, and people are born and die in the tower [1].

[0] - better explained him here: https://boingboing.net/2010/07/22/ted-chiang-interview.html, see “You have very specific views on the difference between magic and science. Can you talk about that?”

[1] - I don’t know if Chiang intended this, but I think you could probably draw a parallel to missionaries to the new world.

Re: Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing

#140

Post by lmm »

IAmBroom wrote: post #73
lmm wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. You mean, like those silly science fiction stories where FTL travel is possible? Or time travel?

> You mean, like those silly science fiction stories where FTL travel is possible? Or time travel?

FTL or time travel are not necessarily unscientific - we know that relativity permits CTCs to exist, they're something that can be explored rigorously and scientifically. Even for stories that adopt decidedly unscientific handwave versions, one dropped stitch won't necessarily unravel the whole garment, especially when it's not the focus - if you're telling a story about life on Omicron Persei 3, how one gets to Omicron Persei 3 may well be beside the point. But yes if a story is full of things like that, even for things that are the focus of the story, then it's not science fiction.

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