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Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing

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Re: Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing

#141

Post by overfeed »

neilparikh wrote: post #139
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…

I was going by the fine article's own definition.

> His definition is about whether there are certain “special people” to whom the general laws of the universe don’t apply

His definition can get fuzzy at the edges - Understand and The Story of Your Life has very special narrators - does it matter why they're special? They could have been a seventh son of a seventh son, foretold by prophecy, gotten abilities from a magic potion, or a burst of gamma rays. It's just that the premise of the stories is science fiction-y. I've just realized the protagonists of "A Wizard of Earthsea" and "The Story of Your Life" have similar beats in their stories, despite belonging to different genres.

Charles Stross (hi!) retconned the Merchant Princes series from straight parallel-worlds fantasy into parallel-worlds SF on book 3 or 4 of the series (it might have been part of lightly rewriting 6 novellas into a trilogy). The transition was seamless, the distinction between Science Fiction and Science Fantasy is gossamer thin.

Re: Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing

#143

Post by graemep »

moefh wrote: post #126
graemep wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You quote American numbers as a counter to a claim about global beliefs? You even cite the powresearch link to to make a claim about China! Even in the US the group most likely to believe in astrology as the "nothing in particular" - non religious but not strongly identifying as atheist or agnostic. Most Chinese people say they are "convinced atheists"[1] so I find your first claim unconvincing. Yes, they live in a d…

I don't see anything in your links that remotely supports your original claim that "The majority of atheists globally believe in astrology". Even if you expand your claim to add fengshui, it's entirely plausible that only about 10% of the Chinese population are atheists who believe in fengshui. That would mean only 17% of Chinese atheists believe in fengshui.

Over 60% of Chinese people say they are convinced atheists (i.e. as opposed to being just non-religious). Nearly half of them believe in feng shui.

At the very least its an indicator that atheist and superstition are a common combination.

Re: Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing

#144

Post by graemep »

dragonwriter wrote: post #135
graemep wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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").

Prophecy is not synonym for prediction. it is a "message from God" in the major theistic religions.

The only prophecies that were predictions I can think of with regard to Christianity were Jewish prophecies of a messiah. The Jewish prophets were leaders, not soothsayers.

> there's kind of an inverse relation between size and durability of religion and the number and specificity of predictions, though

I would question that - things like the Oracle at Delphi lasted a long time. So did fortune telling (mostly non-religious) around the world. How long as astrology lasted?

Re: Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing

#145

Post by frm88 »

benji-york wrote: post #80

If you like that style of scifi, you may also like Adrian Tchaikovsky's work.

Seconded. Not all of it, though. Particularly the trilogies fade in quality and precision of ideas/writing when compared to the standalones. Cage of Souls is one of his latest standalones and it blew me away.

Re: Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing

#146

Post by mannykannot »

LinchZhang wrote: post #26
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 som…

As far as I know, compatibilism takes no position on whether the universe is deterministic. It is, rather, an antithesis to the thesis that determinism is logically incompatible with free will (or, from a more deflationary perspective, it offers an explanation for how we could feel we have 'classical' free will even in a deterministic universe.)

Re: Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing

#147

Post by the_af »

auxbuss wrote: post #123
the_af wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the record, I also found #2 jarring. I understand you cannot write as if walking on egg shells; you have your position and maybe your readers do as well. But this is far from a settled matter, and Chiang's position (which was describing earlier rather than current LLMs, but I still think it arguably holds today) is arguably correct, or valid. I probably agree with Chiang more than I agree with you, which is why I…

I agree. And this together with the obvious misunderstanding of Exhalation re: thermodynamics led me to put down the article. I don't think the article was written by an LLM, but I'm convinced it was LLM-enabled. Which is a pity, because the author seems to have some interesting things to say. But that's the problem with leaning on an LLM: you lose your own voice, and good writing is centred around voice.

It's actually even worse.

I thought the author was talking about Chiang's famous statement about LLMs being "lossy compression", and was ready to admit LLMs progress so fast this may not be the full picture.

However, this is not the author's actual criticism! TFA's states:

> I won't belabor obvious points like his nonfictional views on current-generation LLMs being surprisingly shallow [footnote]

The footnote then links to an alleged "rebuttal" to Chiang by Scott Alexander, link here: https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/01/15/maybe-the-real-superin...

This alleged "rebuttal" is actually referencing this Buzzfeed article by Ted Chiang: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tedchiang/the-real-dang....

Regardless of whether you agree or not with Ted Chiang, his article isn't about "current-generation LLMs"... it's about unchecked capitalism and the fears of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs (at the risk of misrepresenting Chiang, he's saying it's ironic that Silicon Valley's worst fears resemble a sort of unchecked, rampant capitalism).

You don't need to agree with Chiang to realize he's article is sort of neutral on AI/LLM, and is actually a criticism of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs! TFA's author cannot critique his views on capitalism as "shallow" just because he disagrees with them, or misrepresent them as being about state-of-the-art AI/tech when they are actually about capitalism.

How could the article's author (and Scott Alexander) completely miss this?

Re: Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing

#148

Post by the_af »

red-iron-pine wrote: post #108
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…

> 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". "I don't comprehend what's going on and can hardly read, therefore my views about an invisible sky, man which cannot be proven in any way, are valid"

In a less mocking way of putting it, couldn't it be stated as:

"I don't understand the world, and it sometimes seems unfair, so I find comfort in trusting there's some all seeing power who has a plan. I don't understand the plan because I'm flawed, but I trust the plan exists. In the end, I trust this powerful being will reward the just and punish the unjust (or redeem them by showing them the evil of their ways)".

As an atheist, I don't subscribe to this worldview at all, but I can see how it could comfort people. It's a way to explain the unexplainable, and to face the uncertainty of death, illness and tragedy.

Re: Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing

#149

Post by moefh »

graemep wrote: post #143
moefh wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see anything in your links that remotely supports your original claim that "The majority of atheists globally believe in astrology". Even if you expand your claim to add fengshui, it's entirely plausible that only about 10% of the Chinese population are atheists who believe in fengshui. That would mean only 17% of Chinese atheists believe in fengshui.

Over 60% of Chinese people say they are convinced atheists (i.e. as opposed to being just non-religious). Nearly half of them believe in feng shui. At the very least its an indicator that atheist and superstition are a common combination.

> At the very least its an indicator that atheist and superstition are a common combination.

The very least is even less than what I wrote: it's the smallest possible overlap between convinced atheists and fengshui believers: (47-(100-61)) = 8% of the population being both.

You can call it common if you want, but again I don't see how you'd get from that to anywhere near "the majority of atheists globally believe in astrology".

Re: Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing

#150

Post by LinchZhang »

the_af wrote: post #103
lll-o-lll wrote: post #60

Is this an ai written article? > In Exhalation, thermodynamics appear to work differently The whole point of this story is to explain thermodynamics (or entropy). He wrote a little note! I can’t begin to believe this was written by a human who’s really read Chiang.

Can't people simply misremember or misunderstand the story? I've seen more than once (and been accused of the same sin, to be fair) someone completely getting the point of a story backwards , no need to involve AI! I found myself in agreement that Ted Chiang is one of the best scifi writers alive today, but disagreed with other points (that his understanding of then-current LLMs was weak -- I thought Chiang's lossy c…

For this article, I wrote 4000+ words in the first draft and asked AIs to help suggest places where I repeated myself, different sections or other things to cut, etc, so the final article is tightly focused. I tend naturally to be longwinded, and it's helpful to go through iterations of figuring out what to cut in consultation with AI. I also use them to check grammar, typos, and spelling, and whether my points are too complicated (as a rule of thumb, if I didn't explain something well enough for Opus to understand, I assume I need a better explanation for human readers as well). I'm not theoretically opposed to having AIs do the writing but empirically I have not found them useful.

This might be presumptuous of me, but I do not believe current-generation AIs are capable of writing articles of the quality level of my nonfiction writing. I think they have a) lower quality and quantity of overall insight, particular on philosophy-adjacent topics, b) lower ability to be appropriately confident in making claims well[1], and c) noticeably worse ability to "write well", subjectively defined (eg weaker sentences, less deft use of metaphors and references, tries too hard to force a point when there's nothing there, etc).

Honestly I find myself slightly offended by the comparison, though I acknowledge it's one of the things where 2-3 generations down the line AIs might well surpass me at.

I think "blurry jpeg" misses the point, for most practical questions. It conflates substrate and developmental history with emergent capabilities and consequences, and is only one step up from saying "AI is just 1s and 0s"

[1] To be clear this is something I have not mastered, I'm just saying AIs never seem to get this well, though maybe I'm just bad at prompting. In particular there's a particular "internet slop"-style that they go to very quickly, and when I try to prime them away from that they sound fake in a different direction.

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