6 ms·

I adore most of Chiang's work, but Understand is one of my least favorites. Fun premise, yes, but it reads to me like much less mature sci-fi, like something wr

by SamBam 4y ago

I adore most of Chiang's work, but Understand is one of my least favorites. Fun premise, yes, but it reads to me like much less mature sci-fi, like something written by a teen about what being super-smart would feel like.

darkerside 4y ago
You probably just didn't get it. Just kidding
- cwillu 4y ago
  “You're not good at ‹game›, you just do random things for an hour and then you randomly win.” --words I've heard
  - 1123581321 4y ago
    Was this Twilight Imperium? :)
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - cwillu 4y ago
      If I said “no”, would you believe me?
gwern 4y ago
That's the problem with any superintelligence story; they are by definition hard to write without being superintelligent. As Vinge was famously told, "you can't write this story. No one can." If a chimpanzee could write a story about a human expert of any sort, the other chimpanzees wouldn't understand it: it would either be gibberish, or dumbed down to superficial analogies that give an illusion of understanding. ("Then he used his rifle -" "what's a rifle?" "it's a stick which is like throwing a rock. Anyway, he traded some bananas for it with another monkey off the Internet." "What's an Internet?" "uh...") 'Flowers' gets around it by starting with a mentally retarded protagonist and specifically trying to avoid any consequences of superintelligence beyond the emotional & social journey, so most of the story is accomplished 'on the runway', as it were, and is about everything but what he learns & does with his intelligence which is pushed into the background. You can see how it starts getting handwavy as soon as the protagonist takes off to smarter than Keys himself, and he starts having to show the progress by him simply doing ordinary-human things but much faster than a dimmer human, like rearranging the bakery for more efficiency or learning Sanskrit in a week. While it's nice to be able to read German or Sanskrit, it's not particularly useful, especially if you are interested in neuroscience; a real protagonist would be doing things Keys can't even imagine, which sound like gibberish like 'ordinary differential equations' or 'symplectic manifold'. Any societal implications are simply ignored. With 'Understand', Chiang starts with an intelligent protagonist, in a strictly realistic universe other than the superintelligence, where he's well aware there would be major societal consequences and military implications and the protagonist can't simply sit around and play with his lab mouse. So his back is against the narrative wall from the start. He cannot do his usual world-building tricks because he's both ruled out the world mechanics he is usually in a privileged position to understand impossibly well because he made them up in the first place, and because he's not smart enough to write the superintelligent character he's assigned himself. It's an interesting story, but I agree that it can't be considered his best. Because he can't write that story as well as he wants to, and no one can.
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  "the other chimpanzees wouldn't understand it: it would either be gibberish, or dumbed down" This is kind of how "Excession" by Iain M Banks is. Much of the dialogue in the book is supposed to be between the hyperintelligent AI "Minds" that are the ships in his Culture universe. It's supposed to be in a form similar to how they talk to each other. It's quite hard to read. I can never decide which of the two (gibberish or dumbed down) it is. Probably both.
  - euroderf 4y ago
    The inevitable Arthur C Clarke paraphrase: "Any sufficiently advanced conversation is indistinguishable from gibberish."
- myself248 4y ago
  > That's the problem with any superintelligence story; they are by definition hard to write without being superintelligent. Ditto this, but for any domain specialization. A lot of fiction gives me a bad case of something which I don't have a term for but it seems like it might be the inverse of the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect: Basically, I was fine with the story until it got technical in a way that I know well, and the technical aspects of the story were so egregiously sloppy, I could no longer suspend my disbelief. And then even the nontechnical aspects just annoyed me because I figured, if the author was such an idiot they couldn't bother to look up how lasers work or whatever, they probably got everything else wrong too. Even the parts I'm not a specialist in, which I had previously just been taking on faith, I am now forced to assume that a specialist in those things would also find them laughably bad. And the whole work is ruined for me. (To be clear: If the author would just say, "these are magic lasers" or some other form of "a wizard did it", okay that's fine, it's fiction, I'll accept that, let's see how the story develops from there. It's when they try to claim they're real-world lasers but then merrily ascribe them impossible traits, that I get brain-jammed.)
  - techdragon 4y ago
    I’m glad I’m not the only one that has this problem!
notahacker 4y ago
It would have felt much more plausible with a twist at the end where his "superintelligence" was revealed to be a set of delusions related to his cognitive impairment...
- skinnymuch 4y ago
  People should check out Flowers for Charlie, an episode on the most excellent show It’s Always Sunny.
bgroat 4y ago
That's wild because it's my exact opposite take. I found it to be one of the most thoughtful explorations of super-intelligence and how it becomes qualitatively different than conventional intelligence. I came away from it thinking, "This is Limitless if it were written by a grownup"
- softcactus 4y ago
  Exactly how I felt. It explores what motivations of a super-intelligence might be in a way that I hadn't seen before. I understand the commenter's sentiment though--it's difficult to read an earnest story about a super intelligent trans-human because the archetype of "cool and collected super genius" has been done to death and has become cringeworthy.
  - kragen 4y ago
    The most interesting book I've found on the motivations of a super-genius is Notes on the Collection of Transfers. https://www.sidis.net/TransfersContents.htm https://www.sidis.net/TransfersContents.htm
    - softcactus 4y ago
      I'm not sure I understand. I think I'm missing some context.
      - kragen 4y ago
        Look into it. It's fascinating.
      - abecedarius 4y ago
        The context is the author: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James_Sidis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James_Sidis
    - watt 4y ago
      I looked at it and seems this is a collection of inane ramblings about a supremely irrelevant subject: change my mind?
canes123456 4y ago
I feel exactly the same way. I believe it was the first story he wrote and it really shows.

by SamBam 4y ago

darkerside 4y ago

You probably just didn't get it. Just kidding

cwillu 4y ago
“You're not good at ‹game›, you just do random things for an hour and then you randomly win.” --words I've heard
- 1123581321 4y ago
  Was this Twilight Imperium? :)
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - cwillu 4y ago
    If I said “no”, would you believe me?

gwern 4y ago

That's the problem with any superintelligence story; they are by definition hard to write without being superintelligent. As Vinge was famously told, "you can't write this story. No one can." If a chimpanzee could write a story about a human expert of any sort, the other chimpanzees wouldn't understand it: it would either be gibberish, or dumbed down to superficial analogies that give an illusion of understanding. ("Then he used his rifle -" "what's a rifle?" "it's a stick which is like throwing a rock. Anyway, he traded some bananas for it with another monkey off the Internet." "What's an Internet?" "uh...") 'Flowers' gets around it by starting with a mentally retarded protagonist and specifically trying to avoid any consequences of superintelligence beyond the emotional & social journey, so most of the story is accomplished 'on the runway', as it were, and is about everything but what he learns & does with his intelligence which is pushed into the background. You can see how it starts getting handwavy as soon as the protagonist takes off to smarter than Keys himself, and he starts having to show the progress by him simply doing ordinary-human things but much faster than a dimmer human, like rearranging the bakery for more efficiency or learning Sanskrit in a week. While it's nice to be able to read German or Sanskrit, it's not particularly useful, especially if you are interested in neuroscience; a real protagonist would be doing things Keys can't even imagine, which sound like gibberish like 'ordinary differential equations' or 'symplectic manifold'. Any societal implications are simply ignored. With 'Understand', Chiang starts with an intelligent protagonist, in a strictly realistic universe other than the superintelligence, where he's well aware there would be major societal consequences and military implications and the protagonist can't simply sit around and play with his lab mouse. So his back is against the narrative wall from the start. He cannot do his usual world-building tricks because he's both ruled out the world mechanics he is usually in a privileged position to understand impossibly well because he made them up in the first place, and because he's not smart enough to write the superintelligent character he's assigned himself. It's an interesting story, but I agree that it can't be considered his best. Because he can't write that story as well as he wants to, and no one can.

cmrdporcupine 4y ago
"the other chimpanzees wouldn't understand it: it would either be gibberish, or dumbed down" This is kind of how "Excession" by Iain M Banks is. Much of the dialogue in the book is supposed to be between the hyperintelligent AI "Minds" that are the ships in his Culture universe. It's supposed to be in a form similar to how they talk to each other. It's quite hard to read. I can never decide which of the two (gibberish or dumbed down) it is. Probably both.
- euroderf 4y ago
  The inevitable Arthur C Clarke paraphrase: "Any sufficiently advanced conversation is indistinguishable from gibberish."
myself248 4y ago
> That's the problem with any superintelligence story; they are by definition hard to write without being superintelligent. Ditto this, but for any domain specialization. A lot of fiction gives me a bad case of something which I don't have a term for but it seems like it might be the inverse of the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect: Basically, I was fine with the story until it got technical in a way that I know well, and the technical aspects of the story were so egregiously sloppy, I could no longer suspend my disbelief. And then even the nontechnical aspects just annoyed me because I figured, if the author was such an idiot they couldn't bother to look up how lasers work or whatever, they probably got everything else wrong too. Even the parts I'm not a specialist in, which I had previously just been taking on faith, I am now forced to assume that a specialist in those things would also find them laughably bad. And the whole work is ruined for me. (To be clear: If the author would just say, "these are magic lasers" or some other form of "a wizard did it", okay that's fine, it's fiction, I'll accept that, let's see how the story develops from there. It's when they try to claim they're real-world lasers but then merrily ascribe them impossible traits, that I get brain-jammed.)
- techdragon 4y ago
  I’m glad I’m not the only one that has this problem!

notahacker 4y ago

It would have felt much more plausible with a twist at the end where his "superintelligence" was revealed to be a set of delusions related to his cognitive impairment...

skinnymuch 4y ago
People should check out Flowers for Charlie, an episode on the most excellent show It’s Always Sunny.

bgroat 4y ago

That's wild because it's my exact opposite take. I found it to be one of the most thoughtful explorations of super-intelligence and how it becomes qualitatively different than conventional intelligence. I came away from it thinking, "This is Limitless if it were written by a grownup"

softcactus 4y ago
Exactly how I felt. It explores what motivations of a super-intelligence might be in a way that I hadn't seen before. I understand the commenter's sentiment though--it's difficult to read an earnest story about a super intelligent trans-human because the archetype of "cool and collected super genius" has been done to death and has become cringeworthy.
- kragen 4y ago
  The most interesting book I've found on the motivations of a super-genius is Notes on the Collection of Transfers. https://www.sidis.net/TransfersContents.htm https://www.sidis.net/TransfersContents.htm
  - softcactus 4y ago
    I'm not sure I understand. I think I'm missing some context.
    - kragen 4y ago
      Look into it. It's fascinating.
    - abecedarius 4y ago
      The context is the author: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James_Sidis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James_Sidis
  - watt 4y ago
    I looked at it and seems this is a collection of inane ramblings about a supremely irrelevant subject: change my mind?

canes123456 4y ago

I feel exactly the same way. I believe it was the first story he wrote and it really shows.