4 ms·

(spoilers for Diamond Age follow) Mmm, I understand what you're getting at but from what I remember of the book (it's been a few years, please forgive me) the

(spoilers for Diamond Age follow) Mmm, I understand what you're getting at but from what I remember of the book (it's been a few years, please forgive me) the two you're talking about that failed were relatively privileged little girls who in at least one case had separate tutors, school etc, and this played into why it failed, because they abandoned the TYLIP whenever it challenged them or made them uncomfortable. Moreover, TYLIP didn't just work with Nell, it worked with the whole Mouse Army, hundreds of thousands of young girls. Nell not having her birth mother and being functionally "adopted" by the ractor whose name starts with M was a huge part of Nell's character growth, and a parable about children failed by the system who can be so much more if they have someone to love them, but I don't think it was the only reason TYLIP worked. I do remember the book gesturing at what you're talking about though, specifically when it was examining the difference between Nell and those two other relatively privileged little girls. Moreover, my understanding was not that those other two girls had a purely automated TYLIP, it was that the ractors their TYLIPs automatically hired were short-term gigs, while Nell's was someone who stuck with her long term (and was invested and nurturing, as you say). In fact I'm not 100% sure, but I think the whole Mouse Army may have had fully automated TYLIPs that ended up turning out quite well for them. The general trend seems to be that young girls who had no other parental or authority figures bonded very well to the ~~wire monkey~~ TYLIP and developed well because they stuck with it, while those who had human alternatives chose those alternatives as soon as the TYLIP challenged them and therefore did not stick with it and succeed. Doesn't exactly leave us with a policy prescription, but it's still an interesting story. Basically, I agree that anyone seeking to replicate the TYLIP should at least have an answer for this objection because I see it raised every time TYLIP comes up, but the book's actual contents on this issue is pretty complicated and I'm not sure it's obvious that the books version of events is accurate to real life, or even that it maps cleanly onto a "human touch good, wire mother bad" framework.

maxerickson 3y ago
It didn't work with the mouse army, it made them into the mouse army.
- lucubratory 3y ago
  You... what? Do you have like a dystopian internal headcanon for how the book ended? "And then they all tore each other to pieces shortly afterwards because they were poorly socialised, the end.", "And eventually all the young girls became addicts and wasted away doing nothing because they didn't have a strong parental figure that was human, the end.", that sort of thing?
  - maxerickson 3y ago
    It's been a while, but I was just referencing the events that occur in the book. They are an effective force, but they aren't actualized individuals. The primer harmed them.
    - lucubratory 3y ago
      They have formed into an effective military force because the Primer is designed to teach children how to deal with their life situation, and it doesn't fail at that job even when the life situation is extreme (like how the Primer understands that Nell is being abused and tries very hard to get her out of the abusive environment). The Mouse Army are in the middle of a war where WMDs are being used and they're all little girls who can't rely on anyone around them for help, so the Primer teaches them to form not just effective soldiers but an effective military force, in order to secure their escape from the war. Once they're out of the extreme situation, it will presumably teach them more normally once more, just like Nell's Primer adjusted back once Nell was out of the abusive environment. I'm not exactly going to bat for child soldiering here, but I find the idea that the Primer harmed them very strange. The Primer saved them from dying in a horrific war where they had no allies and successfully got them out of that war.
      - hosh 3y ago
        They may have lived, but they turned into autonomous extensions of the Primer. Nell was the only real person, so of course the Mouse Army responded to her. As the other commenter said -- the mouse army were not actualized individuals.
javajosh 3y ago
The Primer doesn't work without human sacrifice. It actually needed two special people: one without anything, and one with a powerful but unfulfilled nurturing instinct. It was a pretty unlikely confluence of circumstance that made it work, and Stephenson hints at this in the book. In fact, Nell is in some ways the perfect synthesis, the maximum amount of work (force over time) that could be created between the Vickies and the Anarchists, exploiting the order/chaos tension that is explicitly discussed in the last chapters. The Vickies know they are stable and creatively dead, and that this is an existential flaw. BTW the r'actor giving up her career, and in many ways her life seemed strange and unlikely when I read the book long ago. But now, after kids, it seems realistic, especially because it satisfied her need to nurture.
- lucubratory 3y ago
  Yes, Nell's character growth and arc was completely reliant on Miranda having a parental instinct and Nell being a child on a fast track to RAD before the TYLIP. The story about her character is absolutely about finding a human that loved her, through an unlikely mechanism. I just take issue with the idea that TYLIP's story is about how a human touch is needed for the concept to work, because as far as I remember that's not the case. That's Nell's story, not the Primer's.
giraffe_lady 3y ago
I should have been more clear, I meant that it failed to achieve the stated goals of its creators, not that it didn't have an impact. I actually think the other girls defining and achieving success on their own terms outside the intention of the primer's creators is one of the more interesting things about the story, especially how that sort of reflects back into their original thesis about transgressiveness. But anyway, I would say that what happened with nell was what they hoped would happen, and the book attributes that success to the bonds with people through the primer. What happens with the other girls is impressive & impactful, but not expected and so "failed" by the standards of those who made it for a specific purpose.
- lucubratory 3y ago
  Oh yes, I agree with that completely. I think the whole idea of raising someone a specific way making them an entrepreneur or whatever is ah, misguided, to be polite, both in aims and possibility. If you have wealth and want to raise someone to be an entrepreneur, it is very easy to do that: give them some wealth and tell them to keep spending it until they succeed. Bam, entrepreneurship achieved, because "entrepreneurship" is just having the resources and social connections to fail as many times as is required to succeed. Entrepreneurship is a possibility of social position, not a mindset, so it can't be taught. You can teach people to work hard, to think creatively, to never give up, all things that are inappropriately considered synonymous with entrepreneurship, and I would consider that to be raising them well. But that is not sufficient to become an entrepreneur, you need resources. My main objection is to the idea a couple of other people have raised here (and I've seen raised elsewhere when TYLIP/LLMs are discussed) that the book says children raised by the Primer are bad/poorly raised/broken without a 1-1 human connection, and therefore it's silly/Torment Nexus to be interested in the idea. I can see you don't believe that's what the book says, but even so I agree that people should have a response for this criticism, because it will always come when you take inspiration from science fiction. I saw someone say it about the neural lace and Neuralink, for example, which is probably the dumbest one I've seen because of how unambiguously good the neural lace is in the Culture. A much better criticism is that Musk is Veppers, that the entire idea of the Culture is opposed to him and people like him, and that Iain Banks would hate his guts.

maxerickson 3y ago

It didn't work with the mouse army, it made them into the mouse army.

lucubratory 3y ago
You... what? Do you have like a dystopian internal headcanon for how the book ended? "And then they all tore each other to pieces shortly afterwards because they were poorly socialised, the end.", "And eventually all the young girls became addicts and wasted away doing nothing because they didn't have a strong parental figure that was human, the end.", that sort of thing?
- maxerickson 3y ago
  It's been a while, but I was just referencing the events that occur in the book. They are an effective force, but they aren't actualized individuals. The primer harmed them.
  - lucubratory 3y ago
    They have formed into an effective military force because the Primer is designed to teach children how to deal with their life situation, and it doesn't fail at that job even when the life situation is extreme (like how the Primer understands that Nell is being abused and tries very hard to get her out of the abusive environment). The Mouse Army are in the middle of a war where WMDs are being used and they're all little girls who can't rely on anyone around them for help, so the Primer teaches them to form not just effective soldiers but an effective military force, in order to secure their escape from the war. Once they're out of the extreme situation, it will presumably teach them more normally once more, just like Nell's Primer adjusted back once Nell was out of the abusive environment. I'm not exactly going to bat for child soldiering here, but I find the idea that the Primer harmed them very strange. The Primer saved them from dying in a horrific war where they had no allies and successfully got them out of that war.
    - hosh 3y ago
      They may have lived, but they turned into autonomous extensions of the Primer. Nell was the only real person, so of course the Mouse Army responded to her. As the other commenter said -- the mouse army were not actualized individuals.

javajosh 3y ago

The Primer doesn't work without human sacrifice. It actually needed two special people: one without anything, and one with a powerful but unfulfilled nurturing instinct. It was a pretty unlikely confluence of circumstance that made it work, and Stephenson hints at this in the book. In fact, Nell is in some ways the perfect synthesis, the maximum amount of work (force over time) that could be created between the Vickies and the Anarchists, exploiting the order/chaos tension that is explicitly discussed in the last chapters. The Vickies know they are stable and creatively dead, and that this is an existential flaw. BTW the r'actor giving up her career, and in many ways her life seemed strange and unlikely when I read the book long ago. But now, after kids, it seems realistic, especially because it satisfied her need to nurture.

lucubratory 3y ago
Yes, Nell's character growth and arc was completely reliant on Miranda having a parental instinct and Nell being a child on a fast track to RAD before the TYLIP. The story about her character is absolutely about finding a human that loved her, through an unlikely mechanism. I just take issue with the idea that TYLIP's story is about how a human touch is needed for the concept to work, because as far as I remember that's not the case. That's Nell's story, not the Primer's.

giraffe_lady 3y ago

I should have been more clear, I meant that it failed to achieve the stated goals of its creators, not that it didn't have an impact. I actually think the other girls defining and achieving success on their own terms outside the intention of the primer's creators is one of the more interesting things about the story, especially how that sort of reflects back into their original thesis about transgressiveness. But anyway, I would say that what happened with nell was what they hoped would happen, and the book attributes that success to the bonds with people through the primer. What happens with the other girls is impressive & impactful, but not expected and so "failed" by the standards of those who made it for a specific purpose.

lucubratory 3y ago
Oh yes, I agree with that completely. I think the whole idea of raising someone a specific way making them an entrepreneur or whatever is ah, misguided, to be polite, both in aims and possibility. If you have wealth and want to raise someone to be an entrepreneur, it is very easy to do that: give them some wealth and tell them to keep spending it until they succeed. Bam, entrepreneurship achieved, because "entrepreneurship" is just having the resources and social connections to fail as many times as is required to succeed. Entrepreneurship is a possibility of social position, not a mindset, so it can't be taught. You can teach people to work hard, to think creatively, to never give up, all things that are inappropriately considered synonymous with entrepreneurship, and I would consider that to be raising them well. But that is not sufficient to become an entrepreneur, you need resources. My main objection is to the idea a couple of other people have raised here (and I've seen raised elsewhere when TYLIP/LLMs are discussed) that the book says children raised by the Primer are bad/poorly raised/broken without a 1-1 human connection, and therefore it's silly/Torment Nexus to be interested in the idea. I can see you don't believe that's what the book says, but even so I agree that people should have a response for this criticism, because it will always come when you take inspiration from science fiction. I saw someone say it about the neural lace and Neuralink, for example, which is probably the dumbest one I've seen because of how unambiguously good the neural lace is in the Culture. A much better criticism is that Musk is Veppers, that the entire idea of the Culture is opposed to him and people like him, and that Iain Banks would hate his guts.