If you liked it and want something in a similar style (conceptually) but with a bit more personal/human element I would recommend The Raw Shark Texts.
As for best sci fi books I’ve read in a while: The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch (think sci fi meets True Detective) - some awesome concepts here and really strong pacing. The other one was Version Control by Dexter Palmer which is a bit slower and more subtle sci fi (big concepts presented in a personal drama style of book)
“Service Model” is a recent one and I had an absolute blast with it. If you don’t have much of a humanities background, you’d benefit from skimming the Wikipedia article. There’s a lot of references to old novels you might miss if you don’t have the context.
He needs to do more in this universe and maybe connect it to one of his others. He really specializes in all the variants of collapse and I love every page of it.
Just read Lexicon by Max Barry (2013) - great sci-fi thriller that actually has a strong anti-memetic component. I wonder if it was an influence on qntm's book.
I feel like I have to mention "The Sky So Big and Black" by John Barnes. IMO, rather underrated. Hadn't really read any good Mars-based science fiction before.
I just came across Hardwired from 1986, it's a cyberpunk dystopian future with lots of action. I loved it, some of it is very prescient, but with lots of 80s influence to an imagined future.
Interesting chain of descent: Walter Jon Williams wrote Hardwired, and R Talsorian Games based their tabletop RPG, Cyberpunk 2020, on it. That's the source material used for the computer RPG, Cyberpunk 2073.
Meanwhile, WJW followed up with Voice of the Whirlwind, which seems to be set about a century later, and drops enough references in Aristoi to place it as the third book in the same universe, quite possibly a thousand years later.
I recommend all three (and almost everything that WJW has written).
I wonder what happens if you prompt it to be a tool and not an assistant and that it does not need to be helpful just do as instructed or something like this
> I don’t think this problem is that hard to solve, it just requires political will that doesn’t exist
This is equivalent to saying "I don't think the problem is hard, it just requires an a simple solution that doesn't exist". Problems are hard problems specifically because simple easy solutions for them don't exist.
"The Pentagon has released a modernization plan for Stars and Stripes that affirms the publication’s independence while expanding Defense Department oversight, introducing new restrictions on content"
Seems like this sentence contains contradictory statements.
Well put, totally agree! The key word here is “affirms”.
Here, watch; I hereby affirm that I am god incarnate, that I have no flaws, and that every unit test I’ve ever written has passed on the first try. It cannot be denied that I affirmed that!
Trump kind of follows it - he declared his war against Iran over about 10 tims already.
The book 1984 was written in 1948 (easy to remember). Kind of interesting to see that it also fits to the lame strategies pursued by Trump. The "flood the zone with shit" is an older copy/paste strategy of the KGB (as explained in the 1980s by Yuri, though he did not compare it to the flood-the-zone part, but it is virtually identical https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9apDnRRSOCk; though perhaps even that strategy is older, the chinese have numerous stratagems that are ancient).
Once, when asked about arming teachers in school, Trump gave a brief answer that went, we should, but we shouldn’t, but we should, but we shouldn’t. Four contradictory answers to a binary question in one sentence.
The guy doesn’t even lie. He’s a reality TV actor working without a script. He says whatever he thinks will get ratings, and if he’s not sure then he’ll try different things and see what sticks.
It will never cease to baffle me that so many people saw this behavior and said, that’s leadership material.
A thought that recently came to mind about this was an article about a local homeless camp that was literally trashing the area in which it was set up. Those people have effectively been discarded by society -- so why should they care about the mess they make, after all, nobody cares about them?
So for the average voter who feels disenfranchised and abandoned by society, why should they care about what Trump says when he's famous, rich, and entertaining to watch?
That's the only way I can make any sense of the matter -- it still messes with my head.
Everything makes sense when you get out of your bubble and realise most people don't even own stock options. Do you think ants contemplate how the world looks like from a bird's eye?
None of it makes sense but it's somewhat understandable.
People are angry and they should be, but the anger is misdirected. People want to "burn this shit down" but they don't give any thought to what might rise from the ashes.
Democracy requires an educated electorate, and we're failing there both formally (schools) and informally (the rise of misinformation). Its beyond distressing to watch this play out so I'm going to stay in my bubble as much as I can.
Corolla demanded answers to complicated sociological questions. Newsome’s response was weak but I don’t see how that’s deflection. The question doesn’t matter to the topic being discussed. It’s an obvious gotcha question from an interviewer who just wants to make a ruckus. I don’t know why a professional politician can’t handle that, but bad handling of a stupid gotcha question is very different from contradicting yourself four times in ten seconds when asked a straightforward question about your own opinion.
This concept of “TDS” confuses me. Trump is a terrible person and a terrible president. Why wouldn’t I be Deranged about him? Thinking badly of him isn’t a Syndrome, it’s a natural consequence of the fact that he’s awful and he has way too much power over my life.
> This concept of “TDS” confuses me. Trump is a terrible person and a terrible president
The only thing you need to understand "TDS" is knowing that it's the exact same accusation-in-a-mirror technique the fascists use on every other topic. By preemptively asserting that the critics are "deranged", they obscure the depth of their own reality distortion field for their cult leader. And for the casual observer who sees a bunch of drama and instinctively steers clear, the default conclusion is to think that the truth must be somewhere in the middle rather than doing the work to think about who is actually stirring up the chaos.
I was talking about the question of why half of California Latinos do t have a checking account.
I’m sure plenty of gotcha questions get asked in the other direction. I don’t generally view the sort of media where people ask that kind of question, because it’s incredibly irritating and uninformative no matter who the target is.
My point is that Trump doesn’t even try to give a coherent answer. He’ll contradict himself within the same answer to a straightforward question and not even bat an eye.
> As a demonstration of the principle, consider two contradictory statements—"All lemons are yellow" and "Not all lemons are yellow"—and suppose that both are true.
I am not understanding why we are freely supposing both are true?
It's demonstrating the implications (principle of explosion) of a contradiction being allowed in a system of formal logic. You can change "suppose both are true" to "suppose the rules of a logical system permit stating both are true".
I hope the flagged comment trying to compare certain tropes of liberal thought to the assault on America, democracy, freedom and the legal system someday learns their comparison is foolish, and stops trying to be contrarian for the sake of feigning intellect.
Precisely. It’s the same methodology used to suppress speech and thought through social media where the terms of service and social media guidelines are used to create a micromanaged framework of approved speech and thought that just happens to align with what one particulate group or another controls.
The next layer of this control harness is to neutralize the Constitution in America that protects inalienable rights, is the “freedoms of speech (within paternalistic approved boundaries), but not freedom of reach” mentality of, “sure, say all you want, but you won’t even be allowed or able to see that we put you in a digital speech dungeon.”
We are essentially allowing and creating an analog to the very sadistic and evil conditions imposed by the ruling aristocratic class of the past and the hidden hand that ruled your life as non-nobility. You get thrown in digital dungeons with no recourse or rights. You are beaten and abused for you thought and speech. You have no right or ability to defend yourself from the torments and abuses of the ruling psychopaths, etc.
That is why freedom of speech is so important, because the sick and depraved ruling class people cannot stand even the ability of people to talk about the abuses they perpetrate against them. It’s typical abusive patterns of truly awful people that are the enemies of all of the rest of humanity.
This is pretty obviously one more step in an effort to make sure that all coverage of U.S. military actions is positive and under the control of the administration.
It's also part of a more recent push to make sure that Iran war coverage is positive. See the head of the FCC threatening to revoke broadcast licenses over Iran war coverage.
The GP comment mentions policy. I think you’re downvoted for trying to grow the scope to include all of Trump’s poems, homilies, and philosophical musings.
This person's ridiculous comment is a fantastic example of bad faith. Whataboutism, putting words in my mouth, and a singularly irritating (willful?) ignorance of current events.
The person who posted this is perhaps not already aware of:
- The FCC chair Brandon Carr threatening broadcasters to cover the war correctly, or else lose their "license"
- Federal judges repeatedly calling out the admin for ignoring court orders, bypassing regulation, and arbitrarily prosecuting political enemies (Jerome Powell being only the latest failed attempt)
- Hegseth saying he can't wait for David Ellison to take over CNN so the coverage improves
If they were aware of these things, I would expect them to recognize a LITTLE significance in the removal of a commitment to 1A principles from a publication owned by the government.
Like in Old Dominiom Jihadist incident, after had stabbed a professor in a classroom full of highly-trained cadet students, got himself stabbed 22 times, broke 9 of his ribs, breath withheld, turned his head 180-degrees and broke his neck before committing suicide?
Once basic needs are well met then wealth is meaningless in absolute terms. It only matters in relative terms where you compare yourself to others. For the super billionaires, adding more zeros to their net worth has diminishing returns because their lives just can't get any materially better. So the relative subjective gap doesn't widen. In fact, if other groups make gains then the relative subjective gap can even shrink. For example, pretty much everyone has a powerful smart phone. The really really expensive phones only rich people can have are only marginally better in function and sometimes not even that. The only way to increase the relative gap then is to make other people's lives worse. And following on this line of thought, a devasting worldwide war or natural disaster would destroy most wealth (even their own), but once the dust settles they will still have more and the relative subjective gap between someone who has resources and the rest of the world who have none couldn't be bigger.
I’m sorry, but this is nonsense. Yes, there’s a point beyond which more wealth doesn’t matter much in absolute terms, but it’s way beyond “basic needs”. Having nice cars, nice homes, traveling, paying for expensive education, having staff help you with things, flying first class, flying private, vacationing on a yacht, collecting art, etc, etc. There are near endless things to spend wealth on, and new things get unlocked well into the hundreds of millions.
> What if no one would want to work as a policemen
This is by far the worst argument. What if we held doctors accountable for malpractice and no one wanted to be a doctor? What if we held engineers liable for faulty designs that break and kill people and no one wanted to be an engineer? What if we held OCCUPATION accountable for DOING JOB BADLY / BREAKING THE LAW? Its a nonsense argument.
What would happen is that only the people that intended to be bad police would not want to the job and/or the people that were bad police (intentional or otherwise) get kicked out of the police force. Same as with every other profession. This is a fantastic outcome and we should do it immediately.
> While alcohol can be used that way, it is not designed for that purpose
Alcohol was not designed. However, marketing campaigns for alcoholic beverages are very much designed. Though I agree that prohibition against drinking won't ever work and would never support it, I do think that prohibition against alcohol advertising and marketing would be a beneficial to society. You are allowed to drink, but you can't try and manipulate people into drinking.
> I would also claim that its addictive potential is lower all things considered.
The addictive potential of alcohol is higher because it is directly chemically affecting the brain. It also causes physical dependencies as well as mental ones. These two often work together and combined are more powerful then the sum of the parts. What is also true is that people who have a genetic propensity for addiction are both more likely then others to become addicted to alcohol, drugs, gambling, or any other usual suspects. Loot boxes are ultimately causing the most damage to the same population subset as alcohol is.
PS. HNers, any good sci-fi book recommendations?
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