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I do not believe I have read a book since Blood Meridian that more directly and brilliantly speaks the truth of what we really are. And it does so as a cracking good SF novel rather than an enormous and borderline unreadable McCormac tome.
You invest so much in it, don't you? It's what elevates you above the beasts of the field, it's what makes you special. Homo sapiens, you call yourself. Wise Man. Do you even know what it is, this consciousness you cite in your own exaltation? Do you even know what it's for?
Maybe you think it gives you free will. Maybe you've forgotten that sleepwalkers converse, drive vehicles, commit crimes and clean up afterwards, unconscious the whole time. Maybe nobody's told you that even waking souls are only slaves in denial.
Make a conscious choice. Decide to move your index finger. Too late! The electricity's already halfway down your arm. Your body began to act a full half-second before your conscious self 'chose' to, for the self chose nothing; something else set your body in motion, sent an executive summary—almost an afterthought— to the homunculus behind your eyes. That little man, that arrogant subroutine that thinks of itself as the person, mistakes correlation for causality: it reads the summary and it sees the hand move, and it thinks that one drove the other.
But it's not in charge. You're not in charge. If free will even exists, it doesn't share living space with the likes of you.
Insight, then. Wisdom. The quest for knowledge, the derivation of theorems, science and technology and all those exclusively human pursuits that must surely rest on a conscious foundation. Maybe that's what sentience would be for— if scientific breakthroughs didn't spring fully-formed from the subconscious mind, manifest themselves in dreams, as full-blown insights after a deep night's sleep. It's the most basic rule of the stymied researcher: stop thinking about the problem. Do something else. It will come to you if you just stop being conscious of it.
Every concert pianist knows that the surest way to ruin a performance is to be aware of what the fingers are doing. Every dancer and acrobat knows enough to let the mind go, let the body run itself. Every driver of any manual vehicle arrives at destinations with no recollection of the stops and turns and roads traveled in getting there. You are all sleepwalkers, whether climbing creative peaks or slogging through some mundane routine for the thousandth time. You are all sleepwalkers.
Don't even try to talk about the learning curve. Don't bother citing the months of deliberate practice that precede the unconscious performance, or the years of study and experiment leading up to the gift-wrapped Eureka moment. So what if your lessons are all learned consciously? Do you think that proves there's no other way? Heuristic software's been learning from experience for over a hundred years. Machines master chess, cars learn to drive themselves, statistical programs face problems and design the experiments to solve them and you think that the only path to learning leads through sentience? You're Stone-age nomads, eking out some marginal existence on the veldt—denying even the possibility of agriculture, because hunting and gathering was good enough for your parents.
Do you want to know what consciousness is for? Do you want to know the only real purpose it serves? Training wheels. You can't see both aspects of the Necker Cube at once, so it lets you focus on one and dismiss the other. That's a pretty half-assed way to parse reality. You're always better off looking at more than one side of anything. Go on, try. Defocus. It's the next logical step.
Oh, but you can't. There's something in the way.
And it's fighting back.
*
Evolution has no foresight. Complex machinery develops its own agendas. Brains—cheat. Feedback loops evolve to promote stable heartbeats and then stumble upon the temptation of rhythm and music. The rush evoked by fractal imagery, the algorithms used for habitat selection, metastasize into art. Thrills that once had to be earned in increments of fitness can now be had from pointless introspection. Aesthetics rise unbidden from a trillion dopamine receptors, and the system moves beyond modeling the organism. It begins to model the very process of modeling. It consumes ever-more computational resources, bogs itself down with endless recursion and irrelevant simulations. Like the parasitic DNA that accretes in every natural genome, it persists and proliferates and produces nothing but itself. Metaprocesses bloom like cancer, and awaken, and call themselves I.
Read this ****. It'll help you figure out what the Shivans might actually be, and why we could be a dead end, a cancer, an intermediate step to be shucked by something not more but less.
Frightening truths in this work. And I don't mean woo-woo Ishmael philosophy or whatever, this is hard like my abs.
It's a novel published with great acclaim, but it's also free right here. (http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm#CC)
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**** I'm super pissed at this book for absolutely nailing the thesis I wanted to use in my own hard SF.
EDIT: MP-Ryan you should read this book, I want to talk about the mother****ing aliens with you, they are some crazy ****.
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Me likey! I'd have to say that I see people as a fair bit more complex than that, and although some seriously aggravating things are hard wired, out particular neural networks are pretty impressive things to have evolved.
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I didn't post the punch line of the book, which is not the last line but comes near the end and is just one of the most devastating pieces of science fiction writing I have ever seen. I wish I could spoil it.
The aliens in this book are so well done. Described down to the last detail (so no resorting to 'we cannot know or comprehend!' tricks), but utterly unlike humans.
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Hmm. Definitely need to check this out, been meaning to get into some good SF.
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I liked that snippet you posted. A lot. AS someone who, unfortunately, has yet to pick up on any truly good Sci-Fi, this has piqued my interest immensely. I'll give it a read later.
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Hoooleeeee****.
I just read the forward. This book is so far awesome.
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**** I'm super pissed at this book for absolutely nailing the thesis I wanted to use in my own hard SF.
EDIT: MP-Ryan you should read this book, I want to talk about the mother****ing aliens with you, they are some crazy ****.
I think I recommended this in the WHIYL thread a while back. It is a cracking good read. Or possibly it was in the Crysis 2 thread, as he co-wrote C2 with Richard Morgan
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I've read Blindsight a few months ago and loved it.
I would also recommend the authors other boooks.
One of the best authors i came across in years.
Not for the faint of heart and outright disturbing in some parts (especially the Starfish trilogy), but also really really good.
Anyways, if you liked Blindsight, then don't hesitate to try Starfish, Maelstrom and Behemoth.
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from what I read (both here and after searching for the book online) I could have used such a book last semester while I had to attend a lecture on "Critique of Pure Reason"...
but well it is never too late to read a good book ;)
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Color me deeply intrigued! This looks to be precisely the sort of literature that I've been hoping to stumble upon for a long while, so thanks a quintillion for posting, Bats. :yes:
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This looks really interesting, I just fear it'll go straight over my head like most things do.
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It's a pretty great piece of text for a fiction work, fits so much as a monologue by an alien narrator explaining the reasons behind their actions. The underlying venom and anger towards humanity and what we are is noticeable between the lines, which in the form of story reveals there's more to them than a well-spoken but unfounded hatred/for the sake of conflict. Makes for a awesome nemesis, rather than a typical villain.
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Dear god. This... this is something...
Battuta, i hate you for breaking my brain so utterly by sharing this.
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Dear god. This... this is something...
Battuta, i hate you for breaking my brain so utterly by sharing this.
Did you read it?
Man what a ****ing great book. I actually thought the narrative got a little sloppy at the climax (would've tightened it up were I him), but the 'punch line' and denouement were just on the money.
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will someone post the TL;DR already.
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nooo
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Dear god. This... this is something...
Battuta, i hate you for breaking my brain so utterly by sharing this.
Did you read it?
Man what a ****ing great book. I actually thought the narrative got a little sloppy at the climax (would've tightened it up were I him), but the 'punch line' and denouement were just on the money.
Yes, i read it. Thats what i'm swearing about.
I loved the book up to the point after the capture of the 2 "starfishies". Afterwards it kinda fell lower and lower. And i loved stuff up to that point because it gave a ****ton of stuff to think about. However, after that, it all kinda went downhill and into what basicallly amounts to "sentience is bad, mmkay?" and the fact that our dear lone survivor of the whole incident is probably the last "wise man" left by the time he's about to reach our blue marble.
@Bobboau, Strange blinky stuff appears, crew gets sent, cosmic horror noms them all but one, everybody dies.
For anything else read the story. Its damn good.
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I remember that one. It was freaky, but good. Really made you think on the nature of sentience.
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I loved the book up to the point after the capture of the 2 "starfishies". Afterwards it kinda fell lower and lower. And i loved stuff up to that point because it gave a ****ton of stuff to think about. However, after that, it all kinda went downhill and into what basicallly amounts to "sentience is bad, mmkay?" and the fact that our dear lone survivor of the whole incident is probably the last "wise man" left by the time he's about to reach our blue marble.
uphill bro, uphill (and it was really chillingly well-thought-out, it wasn't a didactic or a prescription like you make it out to be, it was more like a fearful rumination)
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I loved the book up to the point after the capture of the 2 "starfishies". Afterwards it kinda fell lower and lower. And i loved stuff up to that point because it gave a ****ton of stuff to think about. However, after that, it all kinda went downhill and into what basicallly amounts to "sentience is bad, mmkay?" and the fact that our dear lone survivor of the whole incident is probably the last "wise man" left by the time he's about to reach our blue marble.
uphill bro, uphill (and it was really chillingly well-thought-out, it wasn't a didactic or a prescription like you make it out to be, it was more like a fearful rumination)
i'm just saying the way the latter part came out to me.
however, it is definitely a great read :)
but the ending is not truly a happy one. very bleak prospects.
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Yeah, Blindsight was ****ing fantastic. No idea why I haven't gotten around to reading his other stuff yet (Rifters is meant to be pretty great, at a minimum).
Also, saccades are hilarious.
Also also, what exactly do you regard as the punch line, Batman? It's been a while. Feel free to PM me if you don't want to post it in spoiler tags.
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Entropy always wins ;)
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Meh, full blown cynicism towards man. First thing that went through my head, picard's speech against Q, quoting shakespeare. You kwow what I'm talking about.
So yeah, we are so "full of ourselves", and "free will doesn't exist", etc., bla bla bla. What's your ****ing point? That all is meaningless? That nihilism is true? That we are unimportant? And please inform us how on earth is this some "deep novel ****". The only thing I read is someone pissed off at someone else's attitude, and using words to bring him down. I'd calmly answer "**** you too, dip****, I don't need your poison".
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You need to calm down. It's a discussion about a book, not an attack on whatever your personal beliefs are.
EDIT: Though I notice you're quick to decry and swear violently at the perceived "attack," while you have no compunctions about legitimately attack others' beliefs. Might want to think on that.
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You need to calm down. It's a discussion about a book, not an attack on whatever your personal beliefs are.
EDIT: Though I notice you're quick to decry and swear violently at the perceived "attack," while you have no compunctions about legitimately attack others' beliefs. Might want to think on that.
hm wot?
I'm merely saying that the gist of the OP's quote isn't that good. I'm reading the novel right now to see if I missed something contextual. It apparently has vampires as a SF concept. So I like it already (I like things that don't take themselves seriously).
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Sorry, multiple instances of profanity plus a generally caustic tone made it look like you were royally pissed off.
I still stand by my edit.
Although thinking this novel doesn't take itself seriously solely because it has vampires as a SF concept is... ill-advised.
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Although thinking this novel doesn't take itself seriously solely because it has vampires as a SF concept is... ill-advised.
I have to judge with all the information I got. I started just now, it's the only thing in it that made me chuckle. Please give me a break?
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Although thinking this novel doesn't take itself seriously solely because it has vampires as a SF concept is... ill-advised.
I have to judge with all the information I got. I started just now, it's the only thing in it that made me chuckle. Please give me a break?
Its not really supposed to give you a chuckle. And no, no break. You started spewing **** from your mouth without reading the whole damn thing.
Do it. Only then are you qualified to speak.
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Sorry, multiple instances of profanity plus a generally caustic tone made it look like you were royally pissed off.
Perhaps he is. I daresay he probably ought to be. You're missing the why, however. While interesting reading, in a lot of ways it's like reading Hemmingway. Sure, Papa can write like nobody's business but what he's actually writing is antithetical to any sort of activity, and doubly so to one such as literature. It's annoying, and you sort of wonder he bothered.
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It's annoying, and you sort of wonder he bothered.
I can think of a few reasons. Bakker's made it his mission to present this sort of argument to the masses--although I'm not sure fat fantasy novels are really the correct medium for popularizing any argument, but nevermind.
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I swear I've read this somewhere before, but can't think for the life of me when or where. The more I read it the more I recognize. Gah it's going to bother me until I figure it out.
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Finally got through it. Spent pretty much all of today reading it. Definitely going to be haunted for a while.
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I'm merely saying that the gist of the OP's quote isn't that good.
I'm sorry it frightened you.
I'm reading the novel right now to see if I missed something contextual. It apparently has vampires as a SF concept. So I like it already (I like things that don't take themselves seriously).
The vampires are completely serious, played totally straight and hard, and a critical part of the book's thesis.
But yeah, if you're easily scared by the cold vastness of the universe and by the ramifications of some branchings of game theory, it will not go well.
It's annoying, and you sort of wonder he bothered.
I can think of a few reasons. Bakker's made it his mission to present this sort of argument to the masses--although I'm not sure fat fantasy novels are really the correct medium for popularizing any argument, but nevermind.
Bakker ****ing rocks, amazing mother****er, but Neuropath was a total failure, a dud, an abortion. He better stick to the fat fantasy.
Anyway, the reason it's important to think about things like this is because they may help us prepare for and understand alien life and strategies to deal with it. Or to avoid scenarios like the one hinted at by the end of Blindsight.
I'm not sure how that's antithetical to any kind of activity.
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I was thinking more along the lines of adjusting the educational system to take what we're coming to know about the limits of human cognition into account, but that too.
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Well aside from keeping me from my little modeling endeavours I'm going to give this a second read - love the bit about vampires and not giving any spoilers away, they play a so wonderful part~
Definitely a mental kick in the balls IMO. I'll give a more proper opinion after a second go, first time was getting soaked, now to drown myself.
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I'll load it onto my BlackBerry at work... should help pass the time on the next plane ride I'm stuck on.
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I'm not sure how that's antithetical to any kind of activity.
I'm not talking about the whole book; merely the part the piece referred to as "sentience bad" towards the end.
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I'm not sure how that's antithetical to any kind of activity.
I'm not talking about the whole book; merely the part the piece referred to as "sentience bad" towards the end.
Me too. Like I says:
the reason it's important to think about things like this is because they may help us prepare for and understand alien life and strategies to deal with it. Or to avoid scenarios like the one hinted at by the end of Blindsight.[/spoiler]
I'm not sure how that's antithetical to any kind of activity.
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Or to avoid scenarios like the one hinted at by the end of Blindsight.[/spoiler]
Don't reintroduce 90 degree challenged hyper predators?
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Do it. Only then are you qualified to speak.
So the quotation doesn't live up by itself then?
I'm sorry it frightened you.
How could an hypocritical judgment like the one you brought up against mankind "frighten me"?
I've been there decades ago. I've lost my "Realism" virginity eons ago.
The vampires are completely serious, played totally straight and hard, and a critical part of the book's thesis.
The vampires as depicted in the novel are interesting, its historical justification is the chuckling part. Or I shouldn't be amused by it because you decreed what the right reaction should any reader have? Oh, I forgot you are outside of any human reference point. You're god, so you should know.
But yeah, if you're easily scared by the cold vastness of the universe and by the ramifications of some branchings of game theory, it will not go well
And when did you stop beating your wife, Battuta?
Apart from our bickerings, thank you for the reading. Perhaps I won't read it as you did, but that's the problem of vantage points.
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That was good, genuinely chilling read. I'll probably have to read through it again though, as it wasn't a style I'm used to, and, sadly, I believe quite a bit of the dialog went over my head. I think I go the gist of it though.
Thanks for pointing this out, Batutta. I'll have to look up some of Watt's other work now.
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Me too.
Unfortunately, you are reacting to an entirely different faucet of the message than the one that seems most prominent to me.
(Also, I was pretty sure the first part of the book was more useful on the count you're arguing.)
Welcome to literature. Enjoy your stay.
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I'm about halfway through, and I'm enjoying it so far. It just seems like it's a bit hard to follow in places. I didn't realize what the Gang was until about a quarter of the way through.
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Holy crap, it's an assault on the intellectual masturbation of consciousness, packaged in the form of Sci-Fi intellectual masturbation! My favorite part was the whole thing!
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I'm halfway tempted to write a review of this, what sucked and what worked.
But I'm not sure if it would be worth the effort.
To put it shortly, I find this work uneven, at some instances it is actually well written and proceeding, while on some occasions it becomes total technobabble. And yet again I find that the most interesting part is the childhood of the protagonist that's missing half his brain.
Would this be a representative of what level of current sci-fi?
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No, it's a representative of the work of Peter Watts. Science fiction spreads from Cormac McCarthy (The Road) to ****ty media tie-ins and no one work can represent it all.
There was, however, very little technobabble in Blindsight, which I found admirable. Almost all the neuro material (which is what mattered) was dead on. The whole idea of telematter was mostly a handwave but the appendices made it clear he did a good job of at least working for verisimilitude if not total realism.
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One mans respected and accurate science is another bloke's technobabble, please remember that.
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The whole point of science fiction is to examine the impact science may have on the human condition. Hard SF can be difficult in that respect, but it's the fluent use of game theory and neurobio that makes Blindsight such a compelling argument.
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Finished it. That was a fun read.
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There was, however, very little technobabble in Blindsight, which I found admirable. Almost all the neuro material (which is what mattered) was dead on. The whole idea of telematter was mostly a handwave but the appendices made it clear he did a good job of at least working for verisimilitude if not total realism.
There was plenty of it, enough for me to skip several pages because of Blah Blah, Unnecessary or Just Plain Boring. I agree that the biological stuff sounded good, but I'm not the expert there. However, with Physics and Engineering, it isn't that convincing. Another open fracture in the immersion was when the vampires were introduced, even if author tried to describe them in a very serious way, it was still a bit too much to swallow. Surprisingly, these vampires weren't actually that different from Pratchett's vampires in my opinion. Perhaps making one a captain had something to do with foreshadowing the ending, but still, mythical beast from 1800s in space doesn't really knock me out so to say.
Remember what I might have said about writers' doing their background research? The downside of that is that there is also overdoing it; in that case the text appears to be trying hard to convince, and fails harder because of that. The parts of the story look like a typical case of that. From the language patterns on those parts, it is visible for me that Watts doesn't have a strong background in Physics or Engineering, but he is much more confident (and fun) in Biology and partially Psychology. Even if there is a specialist supporting the creative process, it is down to the writer to actually write it and describe it. This problem is actually prominent in quite a lot of modern books, historical incidents seem almost too eager to jump out of the story and it's impossible to avoid the feeling writer just put them there to gain some points on historical accuracy.
I found the main antagonist protagonist actually interesting, but can't avoid the feeling he was wasted in a story setting like this. My personal feeling is that a story placed on present day, or near future might have served him better; if I were to write a story about this kind of person, I would definitely write it in a more personal style from his point of view compared to his surroundings and relationships between close ones. But that's just my preference.
EDIT: Sometimes you get it right on the first time, sometimes you don't...
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Perhaps making one a captain had something to do with foreshadowing the ending, but still, mythical beast from 1800s in space doesn't really knock me out so to say.
That's exactly what they weren't.
I found the main antagonist actually interesting, but can't avoid the feeling he was wasted in a story setting like this.
I don't think this story had an antagonist. Rorschach, maybe.
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That's exactly what they weren't.
I know. But I simply couldn't avoid thinking the guy without a black cloak and a tuxedo. Made it look rather comedic at the same time.
I don't think this story had an antagonist. Rorschach, maybe.
Precisely
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Yeah I'm sorry, you're not making any sense.
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Yeah I'm sorry, you're not making any sense.
The first bit makes perfect sense; it's how one views a vampire being shaped by previous experience.
The second one is possibly an inept take that. I'm not really sure.
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:lol:
Wait did I really write "antagonist"?
Sorry, that was supposed to be "protagonist".
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Oh okay, now you make sense.
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I agree that Siri was a lousy protagonist. He was always better at the parts where he was at home, with his girlfriend, his friend, or his family. And then in Theseus, he was the dumbest of all, always mindraped by everyone else. It's not that it had no sense, but it felt out of place.
And the quotation is, telepathically?, given by a vampire, not an alien, so it makes *barely* more sense than what it would have if Rorschach made such a point.
I loved the part of "conversation" being treated as a virus attack, and the notion that perhaps such a judgement would be quite common in the universe, as a big ***** you star trek*. Quite the self-hating treatise on how the mind is actually a perpetual senseless thing, which is utterly ironic, for it renders the whole novel as a senseless diatribe about the self, and according to itself, it passes judgement upon the novel itself as an useless virus.
It's the problem of self-contradiction, that made me irritated at the quotation in the OP, for its apparent hypocrisy. Only an ego would make such a vitriolic treatise against ego itself, and if that was made by an alien, it would have been remarkably stupid. As is, however, reads as the last remains of the ego trying to nuke itself out of existence. The whole book is. What remains? "Intelligence", it answers.
I'll have to ponder a little more about this.
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And the quotation is, telepathically?, given by a vampire
No it's not. Not at all.
for it renders the whole novel as a senseless diatribe about the self, and according to itself, it passes judgement upon the novel itself as an useless virus.
No it doesn't. A realistic look at the advantages and disadvantages of self-awareness is the best strategy for a self-aware entity to cope. Being self-aware of self-awareness is one of the only tactics the self-aware have. Self-aware entities built Theseus, after all, which is the only agency in the story which can keep up with Rorschach.
The argument made about self-awareness is that it is sub-optimal. But a spectrum of strategies will still exist for the self-aware to cope. Pretending that self-awareness is not problematic is a more sub-optimal strategy than the alternative (embodied by science fiction novel Blindsight) of examining the weaknesses of self-awareness.
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None of the characters actually really clicked for me, though I think part of that is down to the fact that they're each clearly meant to represent a posthuman archetype more than a living person. I thought Watts made an amateur mistake by naming James James and Bates Bates; the names are too similar and it had me confused right up to the climax.
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No it's not. Not at all.
You're right, so it's god, which is another way of saying it's an epiphany or some sort of thing.
It's irrelevant to my point, which is that such a diatribe is meaningless if taken seriously, it would have meant nothing for an egoless being, no egoless being could even have uttered it. So the conclusion is that it's the ego in an existential crysis. Middle age, perhaps? ;)
No it doesn't. A realistic look at the advantages and disadvantages of self-awareness is the best strategy for a self-aware entity to cope. Being self-aware of self-awareness is one of the only tactics the self-aware have. Self-aware entities built Theseus, after all, which is the only agency in the story which can keep up with Rorschach.
The argument made about self-awareness is that it is sub-optimal. But a spectrum of strategies will still exist for the self-aware to cope. Pretending that self-awareness is not problematic is a more sub-optimal strategy than the alternative (embodied by science fiction novel Blindsight) of examining the weaknesses of self-awareness.
That's what you got out of the novel, but I'm not speaking about that. I'm speaking about the thesis of the novel by itself. Perhaps no single strategy is "better", but the argument is made that this self-awareness was only a mistake or something abhorrent in the universe and in earth itself (the argument about the orangutans and chimps), and that vampires were some sort of (half selfless) ubermen (nietzschian sense), or that selfless machines would eventually substitute mankind.
The thesis, as I read it, is that this self-awareness is just a small blip in the universe, and that real "intelligence", which is just as capable of warfare (and pretty efficient at it) is all that matters in the great wheel of entropy.
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Man the scariest ****ing part of the whole book was when
James gets trapped outside the shelter tent during their first boarding of Rorschach and hallucinates that she's dead. That was the freakiest ****.
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Man the scariest ****ing part of the whole book was when
James gets trapped outside the shelter tent during their first boarding of Rorschach and hallucinates that she's dead. That was the freakiest ****.
Was it her or Bates that firmly believed they didn't exist? I think it was Bates.
Now that is something I found creepy.
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You are right, I am wrong. (See I told you I couldn't keep them straight.)
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Man the scariest ****ing part of the whole book was when
James gets trapped outside the shelter tent during their first boarding of Rorschach and hallucinates that she's dead. That was the freakiest ****.
Was it her or Bates that firmly believed they didn't exist? I think it was Bates.
Now that is something I found creepy.
Yeah, it was.
Not just hallucinating that you're dead, but that you don't [and possibly never did] exist must be the largest mindscrew in the history of mankind. Completely Mental BSOD
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Funny, I wasn't scared about that part. I know it's probably stupid on my part, but I was rather more scared at the
Rorscharch's ability to mindlessly speak and to fool the group for hours, specially at the end of it, when it went for the jugular and chastised the group for thinking they were speaking to a chinese room, and the threat against Susan. A chinese room performing psychological warfare. It was so real while not being so, that it scared me a bit. It's like those nightmares I had when I was a child where the tv set somehow gained consciousness and went to get me, but reversed. The thing is so real while not being that it poses the question, are we real at all?
edited to put the spoiler tags. sorry
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ItT, spoilers don't need tags.
Apparently.
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ItT, spoilers don't need tags.
Apparently.
Fortunately I think most of what he spoiled was early in the book, you should be okay. Just press on and ignore this thread.
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NECROE'D FTW!
Actually, I just finished reading this and the accompanying notes and am fully primed for discussion. A few comments on the narrative itself:
It got much better near the end. Perhaps it's because I neither read nor particularly enjoy "hard" sci-fi as a matter of course, but I found this book genuinely exhausting to read; thematically (in light of the narrative voice) the use of jargonistic theoretical-speak made a lot of sense to the overall tone of the book and drove home a great point that Siri's character was clearly designed to showcase: conscious understanding isn't an essential component of concept acquisition. While I get the point (and think it was well-crafted), it made this thing a pain in the ass to read. That was further compounded by how terrible plain-text reading is on a BlackBerry Torch - my own fault.
Watts admitted that the book had become too laced with theory and that he had to cut a great deal; I disagree. The theoretical aspects weren't especially jarring; instead, the use of assuming technical detail without the associated background made descriptive elements in the text very difficult to follow; theory was not the problem; ambiguity in description was. Of course, that ambiguity probably serves an essential element in the overall theme of the narrative and Siri's specific subtext.
Enough about the technical aspects of the writing. The plot and theme were sufficient to keep my interest and continue reading. What I really want to talk about here is the theme (sentience is not an essential aspect of intelligence and may be an impairment or confound on true intellect) and the vehicle through which it is conveyed: the vampires, and the aliens.
I have a beef: even with the big AI reveal at the end, the characteristics attributed to Sarasti throughout the narrative do not jive with the premise that the vampires are either manifestations or on their way to becoming a non-conscious intellectual species. Watts somewhat crapped that point, BUT that seems to have derived from his own ambiguous feelings on whether consciousness it evolutionarily-derived and fitness-based. I'll forgive him. However, for a being/interface whose motivations were supposedly non-sentient according to the end of the narrative, Sarasti has a lot of elements that speak to sentience and contextualized decision-making. Watts didn't go far enough in the vampire character for my liking, and the interface described at the end somewhat cheapens the overall revelation; the narrative makes a great deal out of vampires' apparently unlimited perceptive abilities (no "ignore" filter, like mere humans) and then it fizzles... and then we're just supposed to accept the leap that comes near the end (insurrection). Not so impressed on that score; Sarasti was the most interesting character by far, and then it just fizzled.
Now, let's talk about the aliens. From the description, I must admit I first thought of echinoderms (sea stars, specifically) so I was fairly amused to discover in the notes that Watts is a marine biologist who likened them to brittle stars. It gave me a chuckle. It's also interesting that the characters make an earlier reference to octopi, since the scramblers share a lot of their characteristics (aside from a true nervous center). The distributed neural processing was a unique device that certainly bears thinking about, and I think Watts recognized that such things do exist [to a limited extent] in nature here on Earth; moreover, that is probably his point. Should we think of an ant colony or biofilm as discrete organisms working synergistically, or would it be more appropriate to think of them as a single distributed organism (the latter conception holds great appeal to me). One of the most thought-provoking pieces is actually in the notes; the observation of competition in a human's various systems is perfectly accurate, and I admit that the immune system has held particular fascination for me since taking my first immunology class several years ago.
I must admit, my first guess on the character of the scramblers was a distributed intelligence operating through individual discrete organisms, and while Watts doesn't rule that out some passages allude more tightly to individual processing and then sharing with a collective. Regardless, they are biologically and psychology interesting because they are so alien to what we normally think of as life (although I don't think they're particularly alien in terms of what life on Earth actually represents; see my earlier comment on ants / biofilms). The distributed intelligence, where I thought Watts was going, would be more alien than what he actually described.
However... much as I find the narrative theme and the questions arising from it fascinating, I disagree with the premise (Watts himself says he hopes he isn't correct about it regardless). I can buy everything about the scramblers (trying to formulate an argument against a non-sentient intelligence taking measures against a perceived threat is extremely difficult), but I have difficulty in buying into a premise that sentience is a cumbersome non-essential byproduct of the evolution of complex reasoning, because the "I" is an important component of emotion and motivation, and social behaviour in general. No species is truly altruistic; there is always a fitness pay-off in some way. "I" allows for the formulation of empathy, which permits complex social bonding. This is my problem with a lot of the discussion around consciousness and sentience in the first place - I think we've got the defining parameters wrong. If humans are sentient, then so are many other species; conversely, if other species are not then neither are we. It's a spectrum, a gradient, not a defining set of rules that constitute a binary state like so many psychologists try to characterize it. Consciousness does indeed limit problem-solving potential, but it also serves to enhance it in other ways. Consciousness is non-linear; and here I refer to daydreams. Letting your mind wander is probably the most conscious act you can take, and yet we tend to characterize consciousness as the typical think-then-react linear path. THAT is reflex. We characterize it in an "I" state because that's how we understand the world in general, but that doesn't make it a conscious act. As Watts pointed out here, in many cases the act actually precedes the thought that commanded it, and we edit the context to think we're exercising will. We're not - those actions are really no different than those of your family dog or cat, we just conceptualize and rationalize the actions of our biological selves to fit within our conception of ourselves as whole beings. Rather, I tend to think that our true consciousness operates both outside and independently of our biological state; sure, the wiring is all chemical and we have some direct control in terms of rationalizing what we do, but our actual thinking ability exists outside of our physical state.
All life is sentient and conscious, to degrees; the trouble is that I don't think those terms have been adequately defined. If humanity is indeed sentient, then I think it would be very hard to truly argue that the vampires or the scramblers are not. Indeed, there is very little to suggest that Watts' scramblers are simply intelligence without self-awareness; even the torturous quizzing does not necessarily support that conclusion, although it points to a different type of self-awareness than what a typical human experiences.
It's an interesting treatise on consciousness. Very thought-provoking, but when analyzed probably not as profound as one might think initially.
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It's an interesting treatise on consciousness. Very thought-provoking, but when analyzed probably not as profound as one might think initially.
Recent Neurobiology advances point us into a direction that suggests our consciousness may indeed not be all that it s cracked up to be.
I shall never tire of underlining a concise little fact which these superstitious people are loath to admit - namely, that a thought comes when "it" wants, not when "I" want.... - Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.
I found Blindsight to be an extremely powerful exploration of the implications derived from the potential *real* nature of our consciousness.
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I have a beef: even with the big AI reveal at the end, the characteristics attributed to Sarasti throughout the narrative do not jive with the premise that the vampires are either manifestations or on their way to becoming a non-conscious intellectual species.
I think part of it is the idea that they have learned to very carefully mimic their prey, so they still appear behaviorally conscious.
and then we're just supposed to accept the leap that comes near the end (insurrection). Not so impressed on that score; Sarasti was the most interesting character by far, and then it just fizzled.
There wasn't so much an insurrection as sabotage; Rorschach was able to induce a new personality in the Gang to its own specifications.
However I did think the climax was very messy and should have had a few more editing passes.
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I have a beef: even with the big AI reveal at the end, the characteristics attributed to Sarasti throughout the narrative do not jive with the premise that the vampires are either manifestations or on their way to becoming a non-conscious intellectual species.
I think part of it is the idea that they have learned to very carefully mimic their prey, so they still appear behaviorally conscious.
That's splitting hairs, and goes back to my musings at the end of my post - if something appears behaviourally conscious, then it is. Consciousness/self-awareness/sentience is a really poorly-used device [in behavioural genetics and biopsych] because it's designed to compare everything to a baseline human experience. We happen to attribute our involuntary, feedback-programmed biological reactions to free will and conscious thought, but they aren't actually a product of conscious thought. Rather, consciousness justifies itself by creating that free will illusion. Nothing in the description of vampires contradicts that. Rather, Sarasti appears to simply have a better grasp of what consciousness actually is, and fewer illusions about its importance. But if Sarasti isn't a conscious being, then neither are the human members of the crew.
There wasn't so much an insurrection as
I was referring to the vampire insurrection that reportedly took place back on Earth while Siri was on his way back in the shuttle. It really did come from nowhere.
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Oh I didn't think it came out of nowhere, the foreshadowing was just pretty subtle. Siri's dad was constantly being called all over the globe with 'problems', and I recall a bunch of grim things he sort of said or hinted at which made me think something big was going wrong.
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Oh I didn't think it came out of nowhere, the foreshadowing was just pretty subtle. Siri's dad was constantly being called all over the globe with 'problems', and I recall a bunch of grim things he sort of said or hinted at which made me think something big was going wrong.
Hrmmm. I didn't get that sense of that being the problem, but now that you mention it that's probably the case and I just missed the subtle foreshadowing. It's unfortunate that Watts didn't give us a scope of the vampire resurrection.