9 ms·

Passing for Human: Philip K. Dick in Vancouver (2018)

104 points by mbustamanter 4y ago

ftxbro 4y ago
I wish PKD could be here to play with the GPT-N AIs.
- pavlov 4y ago
  I wonder if he’d find them very interesting at this point when he predicted something similar half a century ago. Fundamentally these models look backward. They’re a sum of what the Internet contained last year and can write you anything from that viewpoint. But an author like PKD was always looking forward. He might nod to GPT and go back to thinking about how much further things can go.
  - x86x87 4y ago
    To be fair PKD predicted a lot of things that make our current dystopian present. Checkout Vulcan's Hammer for a PKD on AI story.
  - MrVandemar 4y ago
    That's the best summary of what I find disappointing about the recent swift and enthusiastic uptake of AI generated content. Crystalised something for me.
Trasmatta 4y ago
PKD was such a fascinating and tragic person. I always recommend the book VALIS if you really want to get inside his mind. Truly brilliant man, but also full of pain, and unfortunately that pain often spilled out and hurt those around him. > If he could fake being a human so well, how did he know that everyone else wasn’t doing the same? I have this problem with friendships and relationships. I can pretend to be friends with anyone, while secretly harboring strong dislike of that person. Then when I finally connect with somebody I do like, I have this constant fear that they're the ones pretending, while harboring resentment towards me. (I'm in therapy, and this is something I'm working on.)
- finnh 4y ago
  Good luck, in all sincerity. I think that feeling of actual connection is something recognized by both parties, and hopefully you can let that fear go.
- jason-phillips 4y ago
  > Then when I finally connect with somebody I do like, I have this constant fear that they're the ones pretending, while harboring resentment towards me. We're all pretending; some do it blindly. It's easier to see once one is aware of that which underlies the automaton in all of us.
  - spatley 4y ago
    A supplementary point of view: as we all pretend, blindly or not, what matters is how we relate to each other and treat each other. I have no way of knowing what people really think of me. But how they treat me affects me deeply.
- throwanem 4y ago
  "Mad, bad, and dangerous to know" - by all accounts including this one, as accurate a description of Dick as of Lord Byron. I've had lovers like that, and for all that they're immensely exciting and compelling personalities especially at first, it ends up being every bit as intense a relief to be done with them in the end, because of all the trouble they can't or won't help bringing in train. I think the only true way to know you have the respect of such a man is when you tell him he's out of your life for good, and he listens. Don't get me wrong - I do love a good Dick! The man wrote beautifully. But I'm just as glad not to have known him in person.
  - sonofhans 4y ago
    FWIW I know two people who did know him, and spent a lot of time with him — Ursula LeGuin (RIP) and my old lit prof at PSU, Tony Wolk. They both reported him to be warm, humane, erratic, brilliant, fascinating and rewarding to be around.
photochemsyn 4y ago
Philip K. Dick's untimely death by stroke likely robbed the world of a least a few more great works. He seems to have come out of his earlier period of amphetamine addiction and tumultuous female relationships, and had written some interesting material like The Transmigration of Timoth Archer, which features a sympathetic female narrator. Apparently Ursula K LeGuin influenced him to some degree here: https://blog.loa.org/2010/12/what-philip-k-dick-learned-about-women.html https://blog.loa.org/2010/12/what-philip-k-dick-learned-abou... Dick's earlier works do have a particularly bleak flavor, the story of A Scanner Darkly is certainly one of the first major dystopian sci-fi works, which contrasts with a lot of the more utopian sci-fi published in the 50s and 60s. Could have been influenced by Brave New World, some themes are similar.
- Jtsummers 4y ago
  Just to clarify, A Scanner Darkly was not one of his earlier works, it was one of his last. It was written in 1973 (double checked, publication date was 1977, though) which was 21 years after he was first published and 9 years before his death. He only wrote 5 more novels after it.
  - hungryforcodes 4y ago
    Only :)
    - Jtsummers 4y ago
      He had written over 40 novels from 1950 to 1970. He wrote 6 in his last 12 years of life. It just seemed odd to me to describe A Scanner Darkly as one of his earlier works when it very clearly was not.
      - hungryforcodes 4y ago
        Of course I agree with you. My point was that he "only" wrote 5 novels in the last 9 years of his life -- which I find incredible and amazing (in a positive way).
patrickscoleman 4y ago
As a glimpse into the man’s mind, here’s a 1977 speech PKD gave on the nature of time. https://youtu.be/DQbYiXyRZjM https://youtu.be/DQbYiXyRZjM
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  The Christian cross-pollination is fascinating/odd.
  - throwanem 4y ago
    There is much of interest in Christian and especially Catholic mysticism, I find - the latter especially; there are many mansions in the house of the Bishop of Rome, and some of them are strangely inhabited indeed. Thomas Merton is a good example. Back when Ratzinger still ran the CDF, you'd sometimes find Merton's books shelved in Catholic bookstores in shrinkwrap, bearing an orange warning label cautioning the devout reader against being led astray by the contents.
  - Trasmatta 4y ago
    He seemed to favor a Gnostic view of Christianity in particular. He talks a lot about it in VALIS and the Exegesis. There's quite a bit about the Demiurge, and how we're stuck in something called the "Black Iron Prison".
    - madaxe_again 4y ago
      The Empire Never Ended. We live upon a very detailed map that was crafted in the millennium following the Bronze Age collapse — not in the “real” world, by any stretch.
      - Trasmatta 4y ago
        Perhaps the Plasmate will reveal the true nature of reality to us eventually. I thought about getting "The Empire Never Ended" as a tattoo once. Also considered a Ubik tattoo. I can never actually commit myself enough to actually getting a tattoo though.
JKCalhoun 4y ago
> On the second day of the convention, having made public his desire to remain in Vancouver, Phil had been invited to stay with Michael Walsh, a journalist for the Vancouver Province, and his wife Susan, at their home in the city. And instantly my alarm bells were ringing. So I shouted back into the time portal: "Don't do it! He's going to make a play for your wife!" As is often cited, sometimes you don't want to meet your heroes.
joemazerino 4y ago
Good read. Interesting how there hasn't been a connection made between his stimulant abuse and clear manic symptoms -- high emotion, sex drive and narcisissm.
- TheRealPomax 4y ago
  Perhaps if this is the only article you ever read about him. But any biography on him includes notes on his personal drug abuse.
atombender 4y ago
It's a nicely written article, but I have to take issue with the attempt to attach a psychiatric diagnosis to PKD, more than 40 years after his death. By all accounts he was increasingly mentally unstable — the heavy drug and alcohol use did him no favours — and certainly had episodes of deep clinical depression and what would probably qualify as narcissistic traits. But to armchair-diagnose him as a psychopath seems wrong. The Vancouver period retold in this article is interesting and tragic because it marks the nadir of his 1970s drug addiction; after his suicide attempt, he was able to enter a recovery program (albeit an unfortunately cultish one with parallels to Scientology), weaning himself off heavy amphetamine use, moving out of the drug house and to Orange County, then starting to try write more "adult" novels (he wrote "A Scanner Darkly" during this time), which would lead to his significant international recognition towards the end of his life. But just as things got better, the VALIS incident happened, and he relapsed and started drinking whiskey every day, which contributed to his early death.
college_physics 4y ago
Is there some author you'd say is a living incarnation of PKD? Hope this is not seen as unseemly but curious to what degree he might be "continued" somehow
- ogennadi 4y ago
  Peter Watts, perhaps? https://rifters.com/real/shorts.htm https://rifters.com/real/shorts.htm
  - xvilka 4y ago
    Peter Watts is a lot more dystopian and brutal in his works.
walrus01 4y ago
> Susan likened his attention-seeking to that of a two-year old child who throws something to the ground, watches the adult pick it up, and then thinks: What we're saying here is, Philip k Dick was a dick?

104 points by mbustamanter 4y ago

ftxbro 4y ago

I wish PKD could be here to play with the GPT-N AIs.

pavlov 4y ago
I wonder if he’d find them very interesting at this point when he predicted something similar half a century ago. Fundamentally these models look backward. They’re a sum of what the Internet contained last year and can write you anything from that viewpoint. But an author like PKD was always looking forward. He might nod to GPT and go back to thinking about how much further things can go.
- x86x87 4y ago
  To be fair PKD predicted a lot of things that make our current dystopian present. Checkout Vulcan's Hammer for a PKD on AI story.
- MrVandemar 4y ago
  That's the best summary of what I find disappointing about the recent swift and enthusiastic uptake of AI generated content. Crystalised something for me.

Trasmatta 4y ago

PKD was such a fascinating and tragic person. I always recommend the book VALIS if you really want to get inside his mind. Truly brilliant man, but also full of pain, and unfortunately that pain often spilled out and hurt those around him. > If he could fake being a human so well, how did he know that everyone else wasn’t doing the same? I have this problem with friendships and relationships. I can pretend to be friends with anyone, while secretly harboring strong dislike of that person. Then when I finally connect with somebody I do like, I have this constant fear that they're the ones pretending, while harboring resentment towards me. (I'm in therapy, and this is something I'm working on.)

finnh 4y ago
Good luck, in all sincerity. I think that feeling of actual connection is something recognized by both parties, and hopefully you can let that fear go.
jason-phillips 4y ago
> Then when I finally connect with somebody I do like, I have this constant fear that they're the ones pretending, while harboring resentment towards me. We're all pretending; some do it blindly. It's easier to see once one is aware of that which underlies the automaton in all of us.
- spatley 4y ago
  A supplementary point of view: as we all pretend, blindly or not, what matters is how we relate to each other and treat each other. I have no way of knowing what people really think of me. But how they treat me affects me deeply.
throwanem 4y ago
"Mad, bad, and dangerous to know" - by all accounts including this one, as accurate a description of Dick as of Lord Byron. I've had lovers like that, and for all that they're immensely exciting and compelling personalities especially at first, it ends up being every bit as intense a relief to be done with them in the end, because of all the trouble they can't or won't help bringing in train. I think the only true way to know you have the respect of such a man is when you tell him he's out of your life for good, and he listens. Don't get me wrong - I do love a good Dick! The man wrote beautifully. But I'm just as glad not to have known him in person.
- sonofhans 4y ago
  FWIW I know two people who did know him, and spent a lot of time with him — Ursula LeGuin (RIP) and my old lit prof at PSU, Tony Wolk. They both reported him to be warm, humane, erratic, brilliant, fascinating and rewarding to be around.

photochemsyn 4y ago

Philip K. Dick's untimely death by stroke likely robbed the world of a least a few more great works. He seems to have come out of his earlier period of amphetamine addiction and tumultuous female relationships, and had written some interesting material like The Transmigration of Timoth Archer, which features a sympathetic female narrator. Apparently Ursula K LeGuin influenced him to some degree here: https://blog.loa.org/2010/12/what-philip-k-dick-learned-about-women.html https://blog.loa.org/2010/12/what-philip-k-dick-learned-abou... Dick's earlier works do have a particularly bleak flavor, the story of A Scanner Darkly is certainly one of the first major dystopian sci-fi works, which contrasts with a lot of the more utopian sci-fi published in the 50s and 60s. Could have been influenced by Brave New World, some themes are similar.

Jtsummers 4y ago
Just to clarify, A Scanner Darkly was not one of his earlier works, it was one of his last. It was written in 1973 (double checked, publication date was 1977, though) which was 21 years after he was first published and 9 years before his death. He only wrote 5 more novels after it.
- hungryforcodes 4y ago
  Only :)
  - Jtsummers 4y ago
    He had written over 40 novels from 1950 to 1970. He wrote 6 in his last 12 years of life. It just seemed odd to me to describe A Scanner Darkly as one of his earlier works when it very clearly was not.
    - hungryforcodes 4y ago
      Of course I agree with you. My point was that he "only" wrote 5 novels in the last 9 years of his life -- which I find incredible and amazing (in a positive way).

patrickscoleman 4y ago

As a glimpse into the man’s mind, here’s a 1977 speech PKD gave on the nature of time. https://youtu.be/DQbYiXyRZjM https://youtu.be/DQbYiXyRZjM

JKCalhoun 4y ago
The Christian cross-pollination is fascinating/odd.
- throwanem 4y ago
  There is much of interest in Christian and especially Catholic mysticism, I find - the latter especially; there are many mansions in the house of the Bishop of Rome, and some of them are strangely inhabited indeed. Thomas Merton is a good example. Back when Ratzinger still ran the CDF, you'd sometimes find Merton's books shelved in Catholic bookstores in shrinkwrap, bearing an orange warning label cautioning the devout reader against being led astray by the contents.
- Trasmatta 4y ago
  He seemed to favor a Gnostic view of Christianity in particular. He talks a lot about it in VALIS and the Exegesis. There's quite a bit about the Demiurge, and how we're stuck in something called the "Black Iron Prison".
  - madaxe_again 4y ago
    The Empire Never Ended. We live upon a very detailed map that was crafted in the millennium following the Bronze Age collapse — not in the “real” world, by any stretch.
    - Trasmatta 4y ago
      Perhaps the Plasmate will reveal the true nature of reality to us eventually. I thought about getting "The Empire Never Ended" as a tattoo once. Also considered a Ubik tattoo. I can never actually commit myself enough to actually getting a tattoo though.

JKCalhoun 4y ago

> On the second day of the convention, having made public his desire to remain in Vancouver, Phil had been invited to stay with Michael Walsh, a journalist for the Vancouver Province, and his wife Susan, at their home in the city. And instantly my alarm bells were ringing. So I shouted back into the time portal: "Don't do it! He's going to make a play for your wife!" As is often cited, sometimes you don't want to meet your heroes.

joemazerino 4y ago

Good read. Interesting how there hasn't been a connection made between his stimulant abuse and clear manic symptoms -- high emotion, sex drive and narcisissm.

TheRealPomax 4y ago
Perhaps if this is the only article you ever read about him. But any biography on him includes notes on his personal drug abuse.

atombender 4y ago

It's a nicely written article, but I have to take issue with the attempt to attach a psychiatric diagnosis to PKD, more than 40 years after his death. By all accounts he was increasingly mentally unstable — the heavy drug and alcohol use did him no favours — and certainly had episodes of deep clinical depression and what would probably qualify as narcissistic traits. But to armchair-diagnose him as a psychopath seems wrong. The Vancouver period retold in this article is interesting and tragic because it marks the nadir of his 1970s drug addiction; after his suicide attempt, he was able to enter a recovery program (albeit an unfortunately cultish one with parallels to Scientology), weaning himself off heavy amphetamine use, moving out of the drug house and to Orange County, then starting to try write more "adult" novels (he wrote "A Scanner Darkly" during this time), which would lead to his significant international recognition towards the end of his life. But just as things got better, the VALIS incident happened, and he relapsed and started drinking whiskey every day, which contributed to his early death.

college_physics 4y ago

Is there some author you'd say is a living incarnation of PKD? Hope this is not seen as unseemly but curious to what degree he might be "continued" somehow

ogennadi 4y ago
Peter Watts, perhaps? https://rifters.com/real/shorts.htm https://rifters.com/real/shorts.htm
- xvilka 4y ago
  Peter Watts is a lot more dystopian and brutal in his works.

walrus01 4y ago

> Susan likened his attention-seeking to that of a two-year old child who throws something to the ground, watches the adult pick it up, and then thinks: What we're saying here is, Philip k Dick was a dick?