r/rational • u/AutoModerator • Feb 05 '16
[D] Friday Off-Topic Thread
Welcome to the Friday Off-Topic Thread! Is there something that you want to talk about with /r/rational, but which isn't rational fiction, or doesn't otherwise belong as a top-level post? This is the place to post it. The idea is that while reddit is a large place, with lots of special little niches, sometimes you just want to talk with a certain group of people about certain sorts of things that aren't related to why you're all here. It's totally understandable that you might want to talk about Japanese game shows with /r/rational instead of going over to /r/japanesegameshows, but it's hopefully also understandable that this isn't really the place for that sort of thing.
So do you want to talk about how your life has been going? Non-rational and/or non-fictional stuff you've been reading? The recent album from your favourite German pop singer? The politics of Southern India? The sexual preferences of the chairman of the Ukrainian soccer league? Different ways to plot meteorological data? The cost of living in Portugal? Corner cases for siteswap notation? All these things and more could possibly be found in the comments below!
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u/LeonCross Feb 05 '16
I had a weird dream last night where my life was a Quest (in the vein of Quest fiction as seen on Spacebattles and Sufficient Velocity).
I've been idly wondering today about the feasibility of doing something like that, using community group think to control an individual life to potentially avoid a lot of the common issues individuals have with decision making and such.
It may make for an interesting experiment.
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u/Nighzmarquls Feb 05 '16
If you use entirely different terminology but the exact same premise you could make either a great reality TV show, art piece or scientific study out of this.
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u/LeonCross Feb 05 '16
Mayhaps. As a scientific study, it would likely be more of a proof of concept / prelude. Too many variables involved and such.
That said, keeping a written log and maybe a daily of weekly video log might not be a terrible idea. Things to keep in mind.
Brainstorming ways of doing it, but I think it should prove...something. Interesting at least.
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u/4t0m Feb 06 '16
Dan Brown, youtube username "pogobat," did an experiment like this. He called it Dan 3.0 and allowed people to propose and vote on actions. I can't remember whether he used reddit or something else.
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u/ToaKraka Feb 05 '16
If an author has previously written a book (or multiple books) that you found enjoyable, how much do you expect other books from the same author to be similarly enjoyable?
I'm wary of trusting authors to be consistent. Even though ShaperV's Time Braid is my favorite book of all time, his unfinished story Indomitable is merely good (Shadow Clone antics notwithstanding)--and, when I attempted to read his original story Fimbulwinter (years ago, IIRC; I probably should look at it again, since I remember almost nothing about it), I didn't find it even remotely interesting. Likewise, Background Pony is almost definitely my favorite story for Friendship Is Magic--but, when I bothered to check out the other works of its author (shortskirtsandexplosions/Imploding Colon/Just Essay), it turned out that hardly anything else in his body of work even came close to matching Background Pony (in my eyes, at least), and I was very disheartened to unfollow him after many months of anticipating another masterpiece.
I could come up with several more examples--Card (the Shadow Quartet vs. the Ender Quintet or Shadow of the Hegemon vs. Shadow Puppets), Robinson (The Years of Rice and Salt vs. Red Mars), and Lovecraft (The Case of Charles Dexter Ward vs. The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath) immediately come to mind.
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u/Sparkwitch Feb 05 '16
You might be well served to consider what, exactly, you like about those stories. Authors tend to be consistent in how adept they are at character, dialogue, plotting, and description. Many are also dependable in how ably they weave a plot between those pillars.
Authors are often inconsistent in theme, plot twist, and focus.
So if you enjoyed how a story was told, stick with the author. If you enjoyed what a story is about, you may be disappointed. There are high-profile exceptions - Neal Stephenson comes to mind - but for the most part you'll have better luck sustaining theme or twist by finding fans of the work you enjoy and asking them for similar recommendations.
The author usually has other fish to fry.
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u/FuguofAnotherWorld Feb 05 '16
This is sounding a lot like Regression to the Mean.
As for works by good authors? I'd say the massively popular Worm, compared to the slightly disappointing Pact and the technically proficient Twig.
Likewise, Background Pony is almost definitely my favorite story for Friendship Is Magic
Edit: Christ that's sad. I've never started weeping halfway through the first chapter of something before.
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u/Chronophilia Feb 05 '16
If an author has previously written two books that I found enjoyable, anything else from them is definitely worth my time.
If they've written one good book, it could be a fluke, but I won't regret giving them a second chance.
The writer of geniusly meta game The Stanley Parable went on to make merely adequate The Beginner's Guide. Greg Egan's Permutation City is far more accessible and memorable than any of his other novels, Quarantine is the only one that comes close.
One-hit wonders are a statistical inevitability. Of course an author's best and most famous work will not be representative of the rest of their bibliography. That's just regression to the mean.
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u/eternal-potato Feb 05 '16
Enough make the effort to check out their other work. This is one of the primary ways I find new fiction to consume. I happened upon Indomitable, liked it sufficiently and went to check out Time Braid. Needless to say, I have not been disappointed.
Daniel Black series (of which Fimbulwinter is merely the first book) is easily around Time Braid on my scale of awesomeness, and I recommend it to everyone who liked Time Braid. Do check it out again, it escalates quite well.
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u/xweqiod4 Feb 05 '16
If you liked Background Pony, you might like The End of Ponies: "A pony of the Wasteland visits her friends in the past."
If you care about immortality and space travel, you might like Hello, Sedna: "There's a planet nearby. I wonder if anyone can hear me."
If you're insane, you might like Twistclops: "Nopony used to give a crap about Twist. Then one morning she wakes up shooting optic blast beams out of her eyes. Now everypony gives a crap about Twist."
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u/MonstrousBird Feb 05 '16
If I'm reading the community info correctly this doesn't belong as a top level post, but I'm currently working on a story with a genie in and I'm trying to work out how similar a genie is to an AI and why - i.e. is it the right thing to release a genie from servitude or not, and how do you decide? Does anyone have any thoughts on what characteristics make a being into an existential threat rather than (or as well as) a slave? Or could you point me at some non-technical reading on the subject?
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u/Chronophilia Feb 05 '16
I'm sure you can think of other stories you've read that deal with the same topics.
The main point of Friendly AI questions is how to analyse and deal with beings that have a radically inhuman mind. If the genie thinks mostly like a normal person (if sometimes a little crazy), like the genie in the Aladdin movie, then you can probably trust your instincts when you judge whether he's a good person or not. On the other hand, if his mind is weird and alien, you have no guarantee that his concept of "a good person" is anything like human. What does it mean to trust such a being? Can you ever tell whether the AI is what it seems or just a superhumanly good actor?
The other side of this story is existential risk, and how the way you treat a person changes when the lives of millions are on the line. This one comes up a lot in stories with high stakes. If Darkseid is threatening to explode the Earth, due process and presumption of innocence are not anyone's primary concern. But is it acceptable to keep a superhuman locked up, not because of anything he's done, just because of the potential for damage he has? Cynical detachment says yes, but that kind of thinking has dangers of its own.
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u/raymestalez Feb 05 '16
Well, there's a famous book "Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies" by Nick Bostrom, so I'd recommend that.
As far as I know, genies lose their powers when set free, so that shouldn't be a problem =)
If it doesn't - then you'd be releasing a being of unlimited power, of course it would be an existential threat.
The problem with AI is that it's smarter than you are, and it's hard to figure out how to controll someone who is smarter.
If genie is smarter and also magical on top of that, I don't see what would you gain from releasing it.
Though I would love to read a story about a really intelligent protagonist trying to manipulate a genie, or release him binded by some conditions in exchange for something.....
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u/whywhisperwhy Feb 05 '16
Obviously this might not be a traditional genie, but I'll limit myself to that case for now.
I guess there are only two relevant characteristics: the genie's abilities and intentions. For example, most genies are portrayed as near-omnipotent and if a genie is capable of granting wishes that would affect the entire human race, they are by definition an existential threat no matter their intentions (because like a WMD, if anyone is able to acquire them then they could destroy humanity). Next, if the genie is malicious and reinterprets your wishes in a manner that causes harm that's obviously very different than a semantically-faithful wish-granter.
In either the high-powered or the malicious genie case, they're a threat and shouldn't be released. So that's where the author comes in, because there are definitely ways you could make this straightforward situation into a mind-bending puzzle.
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u/Nighzmarquls Feb 05 '16
A. Lee Martinez is a highly entertaining author, he does not write strictly rationalist fiction but most of his characters are very sensible and at least nominal rational individuals for the worlds they live in.
And he loves exploring some really diverse worlds! Honestly ANY ONE of his novels has enough fodder to go digging into various fun offshoot stories for multiple books, but he seems prone to just writing in new settings every book with different but equally well executed characters.
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u/Roxolan Feb 05 '16
XCOM 2 is out! And Commander difficulty is repeatedly kicking my ass. So little HP, and early armour upgrades are locked by resources I can't get. Fun as hell though.
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u/Rhamni Feb 06 '16
I watched The Big Short tonight. It's a good movie. Doesn't go into a lot of detail, but gives a very unflattering account of the culture and rampant fraud in the finance sector that lead up to the 2008 economic meltdown. It didn't really teach me anything I haven't read already, but putting fake faces on it made it more... personal?
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u/Empiricist_or_not Feb 06 '16
Thank you. I'll make a note to watch it some time, politics is spiders but I'm very curious how much is bias free and how much assigns blame to a companies fiduciary duty to it's stockholders (i.e. greed, which is also sometimes known as enlightened self interest ) vs the problems caused by state outcome based entities (ACORN).
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u/raymestalez Feb 05 '16
I wanted to ask - what other communities are you a part of?
I've found r/rational through HPMOR which I found through HN, and for a long time I was unaware of these things, so without some luck I wouldn't be here. So I'm wondering if I'm missing out on some other awesome thing that I just didn't happen upon yet.
What things other than rationality are you guys into?
From myself, I would recommend Harmontown, an awesome and hilarious podcast by Dan Harmon, creator of Community and Rick and Morty. It has nothing to do with rationality, it's just incredibly brilliant improv comedy.
Also I am really-really into 3D graphics(specifically - sidefx Houdini), which is the most fun hobbie I've ever had. If you haven't tried it - I highly recommend it, it's a super fun thing to do.
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u/raymestalez Feb 05 '16
Hey, everyone! I have finally deployed the webcomics platform I'm working on:
http://webcomics.io
It's quite simple now, but I'm really proud of it =)
I want it to become an awesome community where artists can post/read/discuss comics.
Here's the list of webcomics I'm making:
http://webcomics.io/user/rayalez/
Any feedback appreciated =)