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I haven't finished the article yet and am currently reading it. But FWIW I'll just park this howler from the first paragraph here: > "prophesying what innovat
by nonrandomstring 3y ago
I haven't finished the article yet and am currently reading it. But
FWIW I'll just park this howler from the first paragraph here:
> "prophesying what innovations are to come"
No. Prophesy is the ability to see or correctly guess the future - a
future that would have happened without the prophecy.
Christopher Hitchens nailed it absolutely when he noted that science
fiction is rarely prophetic, rather it's taken as a blueprint for
post-facto design. It is self-fulfilling, influential fiction.
- gitfan86 3y agoIt seems unlikely that there has ever been someone making a prediction, never telling anyone about the prediction and then living his life as if he never made the prediction. I predict that Donald Trump will claim election fraud in states he loses in 2024. Is that self fulfilling if it happens since I said it publicly?
- nonrandomstring 3y agoThere's some difference between an author like George Orwell writing a detailed novel which enters popular culture and sells millions of copies - and two blokes at the pub saying the royal family are lizards controlled by the saucer-people.
- jcranmer 3y ago> Is that self fulfilling if it happens since I said it publicly? No. It would be self-fulfilling if Donald Trump claimed election fraud specifically (as in, he's explicitly announcing it!) because gitfan86 said it would happen. If you look at something like the metaverse, a lot of the people trying to build a metaverse are explicitly citing stuff like Snow Crash as the motivation for what they're trying to build. That's what makes it self-fulfilling--the people trying to build the thing in the real world are using the fiction as a blueprint.