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QNTM on memes, anti-memes, and knowledge that doesn't want to be shared
- munificent 5y agoI really enjoyed There Is No Antimemetics Division. It's self published and is, as I understand it, a collection of the author's contributions to SCP [0]. Given that, my expectations about the quality of the writing were pretty low. But it way exceeded them and is some of the most engaging speculative fiction I've read in a long time. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCP_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCP_Foundation
- kevingadd 5y agoIt's hard to overstate how good qntm's work is, at least in this area. The metaphysical underpinnings and world-building are really well considered and the characterization is great.
- jedimastert 5y agoFor whatever reason, SCP is some of the best sci writing out there, especially the short stories outside of the (already incredible) entity wiki entries.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y agoWell there are thousands of entries, bad ones being called frequently, and it has been going on for over a decade. There's bound to be some good stuff in there. I'd say that sturgeon's law still applies though.
- bee_rider 5y agoProbably sturgeon's law is an upper-bound, but a small percentage of a very large number is still pretty big.
- Y_Y 5y ago> Sturgeon's law (or Sturgeon's revelation) is an adage stating "ninety percent of everything is crap." Why doesn't the browser automate away the hassle of looking up this stuff. I can't remember everyone and their many laws!
- lmkg 5y agoSide-note: My favorite Wikipedia page is the List of Eponymous Laws. It's a very eclectic collection of interesting topics to learn about, many of which are worth knowing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_eponymous_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_eponymous_laws
- Y_Y 5y ago> Cole's Law: A salad of thinly sliced cabbage with a mayonnaise dressing I'm gladdened to see that not all the fun has been sucked out of Wikipedia yet. (Don't BJAODN this!)
- wbl 5y agoCole's Law was formulated by the 1960's, as shown by its inclusion in a verse in Westerfilk, attributed to Jordin Kare.
- Y_Y 5y agoCole's Law is well known and famous, But we never obey it at all; Yet for this you really can't blame us. It's thinly sliced cabbage -- that's all https://www.swil.org/FILKS/filkbook4.html https://www.swil.org/FILKS/filkbook4.html
- MivLives 5y agoI think there's also something to be said for the canonization and building on more advanced concepts. For example anti memetics, or pataphysics, or even short hand like Scranton Reality Anchor, or telekill alloy. All these concepts are tools the an author can use without having to reinvent or explain which makes shorter fiction easier. Or they just can ignore them entirely if it's inconvenient to the plot. Every entry there stands on the shoulders of all the others.
- Tcepsa 5y agoI'd also like to call out the S&C Plastics[0] "company", especially around this time of year[1] :-D [0]https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/the-s-c-plastics-hub https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/the-s-c-plastics-hub [1]https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/black-autumn-hub https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/black-autumn-hub
- jychang 5y agoFunny how telekill has basically been removed from the mainline SCPs for years, though.
- MivLives 5y agoI can see why. Too many containment procedures calling for absurd amounts of it. They rewrote it so it has some more disadvantages and to cull it's usage some. I actually did a reread of Series 1 and 2 recently. Was interesting to go that far back as I haven't read any since the lolFoundation. Amazing how many bad ones are back there, or just ones missing that interesting kick that characterizes even the simpler Series 4 or 5 ones.
- teraflop 5y agoThis line from the interview jumped out at me: > QNTM: Do it. If it's your first time, try a second time as well. Your first attempt might be okay or it might not be so okay, but it's something you can get better at over time. You can practice, you can get good. because it's reflected very clearly in qntm's own writing. He's been publishing his fiction online for close to two decades, and I've been following his website for almost as long. He's always been a talented and imaginative writer, but the craftsmanship of his writing has been continuously getting better and better. https://qntm.org/fiction https://qntm.org/fiction
- ethbr0 5y agoLink to the SCP hub: https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/antimemetics-division-hub https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/antimemetics-division-hub And speaking carefully to avoid spoilers, I'd say my primary delight in the QNTM et al. AMD stories is how they lean into the universe to subvert expectations. They never turn out how you expect.
- bduerst 5y agoAnti-meme is one of the original SCP: https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-055 https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-055 Also written by qntm!
- at_a_remove 5y agoFive to the power of five is 3,125. Ahem.
- Tcepsa 5y agoThank you! I've been wondering why that number instead of, er, other numbers since I first discovered the stories earlier this year! ^_^;
- AceJohnny2 5y agoI really loved Ra [1], another of his books. It starts with "Magic is real in the modern world, and a subject of engineering", and it gets much, much crazier from there. It's my favorite of his books/stories. What I particularly liked about it is that it followed this geek's impulse of "yeah but why/how?" and answered it. Then answered the question after that. And after that. It was an exponentially wild ride. It's not a perfect book. The characters are, honestly, kind of weak in an overpowered kind of way; it's more an idea-driven book than plot- or character-driven. But I think the HN crowd would really like it, and it deserves wider recognition! [1] https://qntm.org/ra https://qntm.org/ra
- AceJohnny2 5y ago> kind of weak in an overpowered kind of way I mean many of the characters have forgettable personalities, and react to situations like they have superhuman intellect/foreknowledge.
- ta988 5y agoI totally agree, this was my first non trivial introduction to SCP (and that was recently) and it was a really enjoyable read.
- wyager 5y agoQntm has some great long-form sci-fi novels. Ra in particular was excellent.
- LeifCarrotson 5y agoI also greatly enjoyed reading it online - so much so that when they were published in harcover a few months ago, I got my own copy! https://www.amazon.com/Ra-qntm/dp/B096TRWRWX https://www.amazon.com/Ra-qntm/dp/B096TRWRWX It now occupies an increasingly crowded place of pride on the face-height row of my main bookshelf, in a way that feels remarkably different from my favorite fiction bookmarks folder.
- Verdex 5y agoSame. I read Ra, Fine structure, and no antimemetic division all online. Then as soon as I realized that there exists a published version, I bought all three. Most online fiction I bump into is in desperate need of an editor. The qntm books are actually pretty close to on par with a professionally edited book. And the concepts are not something that I normally find elsewhere.
- twicetwice 5y agoRa is absolutely phenomenal, so good that when I finished it I sent qntm an effusive email thanking him for writing it (to which he sent a kind and thoughtful response), the first time I've done that in a long time. Fine Structure is excellent as well.
- k__ 5y agoThere is no antimemetics divison needs a TV show. Pretty awesome ideas.
- WorkLobster 5y agoSomeone made a fantastic fan "movie" poster a while ago that's stuck in my head ever since: https://existentialterror.tumblr.com/post/611166753441169408/ https://existentialterror.tumblr.com/post/611166753441169408...
- computerfriend 5y agoStrong memetic effect.
- GuB-42 5y agoMaybe not an entire TV show, but it could make a good episode of a series like Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits, if it didn't happen already. Like a lot of SCP material, really.
- k__ 5y agoA mini series at least, I think. The end of death would probably make for a good movie.
- sidpatil 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torchwood:_Miracle_Day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torchwood:_Miracle_Day
- k__ 5y agoAh, nice. I only watched the first few episodes of TW and didn't like it. Then someone suggested that I watched a later season, I think they meant 4 but I remembered 3. I watched 3 and found it okay-ish, but didn't pursue it further.
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- EamonnMR 5y agoAntimemetics division is a fun book, but I think you need to go in with some familiarity with the tropes of SCP because it definitely leans on them.
- inasio 5y agoNot necessarily, I went in cold and it blew me away. Need to remember to check out his other books...
- twicetwice 5y agoI highly recommend Ra, it's phenomenal.
- saeranv 5y agoI actually have no idea what SCP is and I loved the Antimemetics division.
- computerfriend 5y agoI completely disagree. I knew (or remembered) nothing about SCP, but loved the book.
- __MatrixMan__ 5y agoThis article asks: > What information would you intrinsically not want anyone else to find out about? And then injects a "subscribe" nag that says: > my email address is... I thought this juxtaposition was funny.
- anandoza 5y agoAh, maybe it's been changed, but now it's more clearly intentional: > A piece of information you may or may not want us to find about is your email address.... > [email address box] Subscribe Free
- bsedlm 5y agofor some reason, this reminds me of this question that occured to me. How could we design some sort of error correction/encryption algorithm which makes the information impossible to encrypt. If we consider error correction to be the capacity for a message to resist errors, and encryption as the design of reversible error for any possible message (to add the error is to encrypt and to remove it is to decrypt). Then, how can we make an error correction scheme so good that a message encoded with it can be error corrected back into the original regardless of how the encoded message is encrypted?
- drdeca 5y agoAt least with classical information, I'm this is impossible. Classical information can be described with a sequence of bits. If you have a long enough shared random sequence of bits, you can always use that as a one-time-pad, and encrypt it that way. For quantum information, I'm fairly sure that a quantum variation of the one-time-pad still works (where the pad consists of entangled pairs of qubits (the two parties each hold one qubit of each pair) instead of just shared random bits), and so it is, I think, also impossible. (And even if it was possible-but-only-for-quantum-information, I think the no-cloning theorem would still render it pointless, as the only thing preventing it from being encrypted would accomplish, would be allowing someone to successfully intercept a message that was being sent, instead of just causing the message to be lost) _____ Maybe the idea you are really looking for isn't "prevent it from being encrypted", but instead, "make any 'simple' reversible transformation of it, have parts that hint at a way to decode it / leave it still decodeable by some algorithm" ? where, I guess "simple" means something along the lines of, where the transformation can be described with much less information than the message to be sent? This, might(?) be possible? Ok, suppose the transformation is done by a deterministic finite state transducer, and specifically one which is invertible. (i.e. one T s.t. there exists a transducer S s.t. their composition gives the identity relationship over strings on the alphabet) . Then, uh, I guess you could like, take many copies of the message but transformed by different such transducers, and concatenate them together, except, accounting for the possibility of influence from the previous copies on the current copy. (accounting for this possibility by considering, given a transducer T and a string s1, constructing a transducer T' s.t. for any s2 and s3, ((s1 s2 [T] s3) iff (s2 [T'] s3)), or... something like that.) I think if the size of the possible adversary transducers you are dealing with is small compared to the messages you are sending, or rather, if you are allowed to encode your messages in ways that make them really gargantuan and much larger than could ever be practical, then, I think this could be done ? edit: On the other hand, if you don't restrict the adversary to small(relative to your message) reversible finite state transducers, but instead, say, turing machines which have their complexity (either kolmogorov complexity or levin complexity or something) much smaller than that of the message you want to send, and where these compute an transformation with a computable inverse which is provably an inverse, uh, well, that makes the problem harder, but, well, I guess if one can enumerate through all such turing machines (of which there will be finitely many, due to the bound on the complexity), and find the inverse of each, and apply each to the output of the machine, uh, well, one of these will produce the right output of course, but how can one go about determining which one it is? If you have an oracle for complexity... Ok, maybe it would be better to abstract more. The adversary, Chuck, has a large and fairly general, but finite, set of invertible maps from strings to strings, and they will choose one map h from this set. Alice and Bob also know this set, but not which map they chose. Alice and Bob need to agree on a pair of functions f, g from strings to strings, with the goal that the composition f ; h ; g is the identity function. If Alice and Bob have no restrictions on what functions they can use, then, I think there is a solution. The set of strings can be put in one to one correspondence with the natural numbers. What Alice and Bob need to do is find an infinite set of strings such that no two pairs of (transformation potentially chosen by Chuck, potential input to the transformation) produces the same output. For any input, there are only finitely many outputs that these transformations could give. Furthermore, because each of the transformations are invertible, for each of the outputs, each of the transformations produces that output for at most one input, and therefore there are only finitely many inputs such that some map in the set produces that output. So, for each input, there are only finitely many other inputs with which it could be confused. So, a sequence of these strings can be constructed as follows: start with the 0th possible string (under the chosen mapping). This will be used to encode 0. Then, repeat the following: If one has encodings for all natural numbers up to n, take the first string which cannot be confused with any of the strings one has already chosen to encode a number. This will be the encoding for n+1 . This works. (to decode, just find the only codeword which could be transformed into that by one of the maps) Perhaps this could be extended to allow Chuck to have a potentially infinite set of maps, but under the restriction that there is an order on these maps and which maps he is allowed to use is only the ones before a certain point in this order depending on the size of the input he is sent? Or, alternatively, some limitation how how quickly the maps can increase the size (or complexity?) of the string?
- aidenn0 5y agoOne recent anti-meme is words that you are not allowed to say even to refer to the word. If you didn't know the word, the phrase "the N-word" is not very enlightening, but people have been censured and even fired for using that word just to refer to it as a word[1]. In addition if you search for the actual word (not "n-word") on HN none of the articles are from the past year (there are two submissions from the past year, but the articles are from 1999 and 1971. The submissions have a total of 11 upvotes. I recently ran into an article that used the phrase "the R-word" and I had to ask my teenage daughter which particular word that referred to. It's now very googleable, but at the time none of the top 5 pages on google indicated what the word might be. 1: One example: a white teacher at a meeting discussing standards for materials used in the classroom. One rule disallowed books with the n-word. The teacher said roughly: "So if there is a book about the black experience, written by a black author, I can't use it in my classroom because it has the word 'n*****' in it?"
- alisonkisk 5y agoRecent??? The tetragrammaton is thousands of years old. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetragrammaton https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetragrammaton
- willhinsa 5y agoN, R, and F.
- Y_Y 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphemism#Euphemism_treadmill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphemism#Euphemism_treadmill For what it's worth, this stuff is culturally relative. The r-word is apparently "retard", and not an unsayable slur within my cultural sphere, to the best of my limited knowledge.
- aidenn0 5y ago> The r-word is apparently "retard", and not an unsayable slur within my cultural sphere, to the best of my limited knowledge. True of my cultural sphere as well, but it's considerably more shocking a word than "fuck" is to my teenage daughter.
- lowbloodsugar 5y agoFirst time I read There Is No Antimemetics Division I immediately read it again. Now I read it if I'm waiting for a good book to show up. There's no other book that I can just read again and again and enjoy it.
- PaulHoule 5y agoIt reminds me of what Baudrillard writes about "The Secret" in his book "On Seduction". For a "secret" to be significant there has to be some awareness that a "secret" exists. As Don Rumsfeld would put it, it is a "known unknown".
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ZephyrP 5y agoIn addition to fiction, qntm is a sharp, versatile programmer. greenery [1], their unobtrusive and generally tasteful python library for manipulating regular expressions, is also accompanied by high-quality technical writing on related topics [2] [3] [4] [5]. [1] https://github.com/qntm/greenery https://github.com/qntm/greenery [2] https://qntm.org/greenery https://qntm.org/greenery [3] https://qntm.org/lego https://qntm.org/lego [4] https://qntm.org/plants https://qntm.org/plants [5] https://qntm.org/fsm https://qntm.org/fsm
- mwilcox 5y ago21e8