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Idol Words
- hprotagonist 5y agoTell all the truth but tell it slant — Success in Circuit lies Too bright for our infirm Delight The Truth's superb surprise As Lightning to the Children eased With explanation kind The Truth must dazzle gradually Or every man be blind —
- DantesKite 5y agoThat was a fun read. Thanks for the recommendation. Scott Alexander will make for a fine science fiction writer someday, if not already.
- lukifer 5y agoHis full-length online novel was the funnest thing I've read in the last decade: https://unsongbook.com/ https://unsongbook.com/ (a little googling will also turn up Kindle/ePub versions)
- stickfigure 5y agoIf you liked that, you'll love this piece by the same author: https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/02/and-i-show-you-how-deep-the-rabbit-hole-goes/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/02/and-i-show-you-how-dee...
- isoprophlex 5y ago> Finally they transfer you to an easier assignment in the Moscow embassy. You make Vladimir Putin’s phone start ringing at weird hours of the night so that he never gets enough sleep to think entirely clearly. It’s an easy job, but rewarding, and no assassins ever bother you again. Man... I really wish they hadn't..!
- EarlKing 5y agoPENGUIN MONKEY TACO. That's all.
- abalaji 5y agoWell that's one helluva meet cute
- A4ET8a8uTh0 5y agoI went in skeptical, but I was quickly won over. I almost wonder if this is the next incarnation of Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett. And author seems young too. If I ever see hope for humanity, it is with works such as these. Going through 'Unsong' now.
- mastax 5y agoIt turns out the way to get good at writing is to write, a lot. Scott fits the bill.
- cycomanic 5y agoSame, I didn't know what to expect when I started reading. Initially, (for the first two petitioners) I was expecting this to be one of those "how to optimise yourself" blogs that have been quite popular on HN and the author was using the idols for some sort of allegory to make a point. I'm glad I continued reading, what a delightful story.
- dcx 5y agoWhat a fun exploration of an idea! That if we're living in a universe with a creator (simulation or otherwise), even if we're blocked from knowledge of higher purposes, we might be able to pick up some hints from looking at the nature of the universe itself. And the three items Scott points out are clever: (a) there are secret depths that pay rewards in exchange for structured intelligence, aka math and science, (b) many religious and psychedelic experiences report similar experiences of interconnectedness and higher meaning, (c) the world is set up in such a way that almost everyone experiences certain important things: love, suffering, growth, family, etc. I'm sure this has been discussed to death in some branch of metaphysics - can anyone share pointers to interesting material? I feel like Bostrom's simulation hypothesis opens up a lot of space here that hasn't been fully explored yet (but I could be wrong).
- eru 5y agoWell, Scott's Unsong is the obvious thing to read if you are into this kind of stuff. Given the nature of the post, you might also like some of the Taoist writings by Raymond Smullyan himself. Eg https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/godTaoist.html https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/godTa... or his book 'The Tao is Silent'.
- dvh 5y agoIn ideal world quantum entanglement is possible at any scale, but because their resources are limited, we can entangle only very small objects. They just don't have the resources to entangle larger objects so they introduced decoherence to keep entangled area small.
- lmarcos 5y agoBut that's a very human-centric view of reality, isn't it? Sure, we are humans, so we can't (don't want to?) think in a different way. Other living entities in this planet do not experiment all the 3 points above (or at least that's what we know). Who knows what other living entities experiment out there in the universe? It's difficult to extrapolate meaning about reality with a sample of N=1 (humanity), but I guess we can't do better for the moment.
- suction 5y ago
- cycomanic 5y agoWhat a terrible take on the story. Did you actually read it?
- eru 5y agoI'm actually somewhat impressed by 'suction'. They managed to find probably the least interesting, but most inflammatory take. That must be deliberate trolling?
- hoseja 5y agoYeah you just knew it's gonna be Hermione situation again.
- eyelidlessness 5y agoWhut? I am quick to spot toxic things in storytelling and I spotted one but it definitely wasn’t this.
- focuspokus 5y agoWhat do you mean by toxic things in storytelling? Are these some content-agnostic, structural things or what? What is the one you spotted here?
- omnicognate 5y agoA very enjoyable story indeed. I think it would be improved by adding at the end: "No."
- Adverblessly 5y agoThat would ruin the joke though. By asking the idols three questions the keeper learns "something worth knowing" - the girl's phone number.
- ajb 5y agoBear in mind that Scott is a big fan of puns. It might not be the phone number that is worth knowing.
- omnicognate 5y agoYes, but it would be entirely in keeping with the idols' behaviour for him not to actually learn anything useful in the end.
- gpvos 5y agoIt seems to me like the idols do reward serious or worthy petitioners with useful hints.
- js8 5y agoRaymond Smullyan would be proud, and amused!
- avg_dev 5y agoI wondered what his questions would be.
- Frotag 5y agoFrom the title, I was hoping this would be some parody about pop idols, kind of like First and Last Idol -- https://j-novel.club/series/last-and-first-idol https://j-novel.club/series/last-and-first-idol . But pleasantly disappointed and going to check out more of the author's work later.
- FrozenVoid 5y agoInterpretations of I-Ching divination seem to show the same: you can't gain "useful information", but you absorb background knowledge and understand your own motives better(like rubber duck debugging forces you to reify your mental model)
- simonebrunozzi 5y agoFor a moment I thought this was about Idle Words [0]. [0]: https://idlewords.com/ https://idlewords.com/
- praptak 5y agoI came here to write that I don't know whether it is an intentional wordplay (and a tribute to idlewords?). Maybe this should be my question to the idols.
- addcninblue 5y agoI think both are referencing the phrase "idle words," meaning "empty rhetoric or insincere or exaggerated talk" (from Google).