I just read the Antimemetics division and qntm's short story collection. I loved the short stories and first ~40-60% of the Antimemetics Division and felt it then got too crazy and abstract. The "magic is real" thing has new worried as I usually avoid fantasy. Do you think I'll still like Ra?
I read Ra and I loved it, but it's imperfect. It could use an editor. Antimemetics, being SCP-related, comes with a hefty dollop of magical realism. Ra, to me, felt like a rocket ride as new ideas, twists, and exponentially escalating stakes get thrown at you. The pacing is very jerky, and I can very much understand if people just nope halfway through. In particular, the characters... suck (my apologies, Sam)
Characters sucking is a common complaint about hard scifi which I can very much live with and am used to. Thank you!
Can confirm - I'm a huge fan of Greg Egan and specifically Permutation city, and also a huge fan of qntm's stories. Lena is probably the most famous, though not even the best ("I don't know Timmy" is better IMO). Also, I finally read qntm's Antimemetics division and, while it is a bit lacking in the end, it is one of the most "oh wow this is a crazy good idea" stories I've read in years.
I'd also wager that "I don't know Timmy" is more thematically related. I feel most of the discussion in this thread glosses over what is most unsettling about Permutation City. It isn't just a book about what it could be like to be a simulated mind, it's most deeply about exploring the disquieting metaphysical consequences of computable minds. I can't think of a story that has as thoroughly scattered my basic grasp o…
> But you can turn it off without consequence and Permutation City explores the disturbing implications of why thoroughly
Can you turn it off? The entire universe is 100% deterministic and the "stack" of universes in question is based on the same seed data. So if you decide to turn the n+1 simulation off, the same decision will be made in the n-1 universe. The simulation isn't running on some self-replicating automaton like in Permutation City. Of course the universe being 100% deterministic also poses the question if you can "decide" to do anything, since all decisions are already made.
I'd also wager that "I don't know Timmy" is more thematically related. I feel most of the discussion in this thread glosses over what is most unsettling about Permutation City. It isn't just a book about what it could be like to be a simulated mind, it's most deeply about exploring the disquieting metaphysical consequences of computable minds. I can't think of a story that has as thoroughly scattered my basic grasp o…
> But you can turn it off without consequence and Permutation City explores the disturbing implications of why thoroughly Can you turn it off? The entire universe is 100% deterministic and the "stack" of universes in question is based on the same seed data. So if you decide to turn the n+1 simulation off, the same decision will be made in the n-1 universe. The simulation isn't running on some self-replicating automat…
The point is that if the universe is entirely deterministic then it is entirely described by its starting conditions: from the point of view of entities within it, it makes no difference if you run the simulation or not, they exist from their own perspective. Running the simulation only matters to you. So in the case where you have recursive simulations of the same universe like in the story, even if you turn of your simulation, implying the universe 'above' turns off theirs, you will continue to exist just fine, as far as you can see. That is the core idea of permutation city: they set up a simulation containing themselves and then don't bother to continue to run it: it doesn't matter to the simulated version of themselves (of course, you can ask the question whether they would need to set up the simulation in the first place. And then things get more crazy).
Pretty awesome book. Would be cool if someone could recommend sci-fi that equally good.
Novella, free to read: The Epiphany of Gliese 581 https://borretti.me/fiction/eog581 > A linguist, a chemist, and a comparative psychologist explore the ruins of a dead superintelligence.
Excellent Sci-Fi yarn, with nostalgic references. I particularly liked the VAX-11 and LISP reference ("ideograms in a formal language full of parentheses")
Just curious if it repeatedly crashed your Kindle? My Kindle (Oasis 2nd gen) was very unhappy with the "redacted" black bars. When a page was full of them, the Kindle just gave up.
Nope, read it on my Kindle Oasis (I believe 2nd gen but not sure), and it was perfectly fine.
The one with sort-of-vampires with epileptic effects triggered by corners, creatures capable of movement starting and completing in way their movement was not noticeable by human brain and curiously trusting people in way that ended in predictable bad ending?
Yeah the crucifix glitch is kind of silly though it does have an internally consistent explanation. I feel like maybe you didnt read the notes and references (complete with citations)? Because otherwise you would know this? Was the ending actually bad? like badly written or bad for the characters? Personally I thought the ending was good. It felt inevitable and also positive. Humanity got to keep living and the main…
"bad ending" not as in "badly written" but as in "bad end" - bad things in general happen in fictional world and to this fictional characters (as opposed to "good ending" or "bittersweet ending").