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> Many of his readers, even in their otherwise rave reviews, miss this. Multiple reviewers complain about how the science in his stories are “unrealistic” (e.g.

by lmm 1y ago

> Many of his readers, even in their otherwise rave reviews, miss this. Multiple reviewers complain about how the science in his stories are “unrealistic” (e.g. strong Sapir-Whorf is “discredited”). They expected hard science fiction; Chiang was doing something different. Chiang created different universes with internally self-consistent scientific laws, using science fiction and alternative science as a vehicle for exploring philosophical progress and human relationships. This is being overly kind. "What if religion was actually true?" does not create a universe with internally self-consistent scientific laws; it creates a universe full of impossibility from which you then pick and choose one or two things to focus on, and end up with not science fiction but fantasy.

alexey-salmin 1y ago
It's not impossible from a scientific perspective for a planet to be terraformed and seeded with intelligent life by some overly advanced spices (you can say "god-like"). Or to create a simulation with intelligent life in it and to save some resources by starting 6000 years ago from a complex seed state rather than simulating 16 billion years of physics to see the intelligent life emerge or not. That would be rather inconvenient for the PhD studying simulated intelligent life, he'd better just purchase and rearrange some pre-computed data. The difference between science and religion doesn't lie in disagreement over particular facts or any facts at all, the difference is in the approach. Religion can explain anything but predicts very little (except for sociological phenomena which it predicts rather well). Science is built around making verifiable predictions but doesn't in fact give any answers, only theories that are (mostly) consistent with observable events (so far). They can however agree or disagree over any particular set of facts. Take any religious belief and you can build a scientific world where it is true.
- avar 1y ago
  > science is built around making verifiable > predictions but doesn't in fact give any > answers, only theories This is just redefining "theory" and "answer" to the point of meaninglessness. Darwin didn't know a lot of things about evolution or biology, and I'm sure he had questions about some of those things. If you could talk to him today you could give him answers to those questions, and the reason for that is that those answers are found in theories and scientific progress in general. But yes, it doesn't provide "answers" in the mushy religious sense, i.e. "what is it all for?". > The difference between science and > religion doesn't lie in disagreement > over particular facts or any facts at all Yes, it does. You're just implicitly excluding all the parts where religious texts make empirical claims about reality as unimportant or allegory, because religion has already lost those arguments. Do you think Galileo clashed with the Catholic church over heliocentrism because the church didn't understand what religion should and shouldn't be making claims about?
  - alexey-salmin 1y ago
    The point being, a theory only holds "true" until it's superseded by a better theory. Furthermore, multiple conflicting theories can be in use at the same time in the absence of a good unifying theory. In the end science neither says nor cares what is "true", it just looks for theories that are good at predicting stuff. "Answers" in a common sense are supposed to be "true" and "permanent" or at least that's how I understand the word. EDIT apparently the comment above got extended, so I'll address some of newer points too. > You're just implicitly excluding all the parts where religious texts make empirical claims about reality as unimportant or allegory, because religion has already lost those arguments. No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying all these claims can be as well true in a different (fully consistent and scientific) world. Furthermore, if you assume we live in a simulation then basically anything becomes possible in OUR world too, including Jesus walking on water turned into wine. It's just our simulation overlords had a good sense of humor. The reason why we don't usually consider simulation theories is not because they're false (this can't be proven), but because they aren't practical and don't predict much. Even if we do live in a simulation, this simulation so far seems to follow some consistent internal "laws" so we can as well study those. Not that it means anything, but helps us to exterminate those who neglect these laws so it's a survivorship bias in action.
    - dragonwriter 1y ago
      > "Answers" in a common sense are supposed to be "true" and "permanent" I would argue that answers are supposed to be useful for the purpose motivating the question. Q: What is the price of gas? A1: The number of units of some other good or service demanded by a seller in echange for a given quantity of it. A2: about $4.00/gal A1 is, I would say, both "true" and "permanent". Assuming it is at least approximately accurate, though, A2 is much more of an answer in most cases the question is asked, even though it is at perhaps only approximately and in any case at best transitorily true.
      - alexey-salmin 1y ago
        In that sense yes, I agree that science gives good answers.
- dragonwriter 1y ago
  > Religion can explain anything but predicts very little (except for sociological phenomena which it predicts rather well). No, it doesn't. I mean, it does the horoscope thing where it makes predictions vague enough that people can retrospectively fit whatever actually happens into them easily, but that's not actually predicting very well.
  - alexey-salmin 1y ago
    Religions are to a big extent codified traditions and many traditions emerged and persisted because they benefited their bearers in one way or another. That's fundamentally different from horoscopes.
    - dragonwriter 1y ago
      > Religions are to a big extent codified traditions and many traditions emerged and persisted because they benefited their bearers in one way or another. Religions are a lot more than just codified traditions, but yes, some traditions are have benefits. That doesn't mean that the religion as a whole is good at predicting anything, it just means that they occasionally preserve things that are beneficial. But because what is codified is codified without systematic knowledge of what works or how it works, the preservation of benefit is essentially random with weak selective pressure acting in the aggregate of beliefs, and with a very big "past utility is no guarantee of future utility" even on the bits that are useful, because the utility of the tradition may be tied to conditions that are not preserved, while the tradition itself is blindly perserved.
      - alexey-salmin 1y ago
        > But because what is codified is codified without systematic knowledge of what works or how it works, the preservation of benefit is essentially random with weak selective pressure acting in the aggregate of beliefs But you agree this must be much better than random? Evolutionary pressure on species is also rather weak: unfit specimen survive and fit specimen die due to chance all the time. But look where it got us when averaged over long periods of time. I don't buy the "systematic knowledge of what works or how it works" part. That's what NLP scientists used to say about neural nets while building monstrous systems based on "systematic knowledge of grammar". You definitely don't have to understand "how it works" to be able to make good predictions.
- lmm 1y ago
  > some overly advanced spices (you can say "god-like") You really can't. They're very different. > It's not impossible from a scientific perspective for a planet to be terraformed and seeded with intelligent life by some overly advanced spices (you can say "god-like"). Or to create a simulation with intelligent life in it and to save some resources by starting 6000 years ago from a complex seed state rather than simulating 16 billion years of physics to see the intelligent life emerge or not. True enough. But such a world would be very different from a world in which the bible was literally true, and a world in which the bible is actually literally true is genuinely scientifically impossible. You would have to redefine an unimaginably large number of things and you would still have a world full of impossible contradictions to the point that nothing could be said. > Take any religious belief and you can build a scientific world where it is true. You can't, because the beliefs are fundamentally unscientific and self-contradictory. There is no possible world in which the god that actually religious people believe in exists as they believe in him; there are possible worlds in which an entity with approximately the same gross physical properties exists, but such an entity is nothing like the actual religious god.
  - alexey-salmin 1y ago
    > You can't, because the beliefs are fundamentally unscientific and self-contradictory. There is no possible world in which the god that actually religious people believe in exists as they believe in him; there are possible worlds in which an entity with approximately the same gross physical properties exists, but such an entity is nothing like the actual religious god. Why not? I don't think it's likely and I definitely don't build my life under an assumption that this is true. However I just can't see how this can be ruled out by scientific means. Our world doesn't have to follow any laws at all, this whole thing can be a bad dream of a sleeping giant.
    - lmm 1y ago
      > However I just can't see how this can be ruled out by scientific means. Our world doesn't have to follow any laws at all, this whole thing can be a bad dream of a sleeping giant. If you took that hypothesis seriously you'd still be able to apply predictions and laws. Giving up on trying to understand it is what's unscientific.
- breuleux 1y ago
  > It's not impossible from a scientific perspective ... to create a simulation with intelligent life in it and to save some resources by starting 6000 years ago from a complex seed state rather than simulating 16 billion years of physics to see the intelligent life emerge or not. I'm fairly certain simulating 16 billion years of physics (or 6000) in a shorter timeframe than 16 billion years (or 6000) is, in fact, scientifically impossible. Mathematically impossible, even, because it leads to absurd consequences such as the simulator being able to simulate itself faster than itself.
  - alexey-salmin 1y ago
    In our own universe — sure. In some "bigger" universe it could be entirely possible, ours would fit nicely.
  - BenjiWiebe 1y ago
    You wouldn't need to simulate much. If you were a simulation, you could exist right now only, and merely have false memories about everything else.
tgv 1y ago
I think this is a case of trees and forest. Scifi doesn't require "a universe with internally self-consistent scientific laws." Or, if you want to hold on to that interpretation, there is no scifi. Not even the ones that uphold our current knowledge of physics, since that is known to be incomplete. Scifi --to me, but to many others as well-- is a thought experiment in prose. Like any work of fiction, it needs to have some consistency, but certainly not total. We can "suspend our disbelief." The story you refer to is consistent, though. It stays away from details that would break that. It can do that, because (1) realism is not the goal of the story, and (2) a practically omnipotent God is given, which allows every possible scenario.
- lmm 1y ago
  > Scifi --to me, but to many others as well-- is a thought experiment in prose. Like any work of fiction, it needs to have some consistency, but certainly not total. We can "suspend our disbelief." Then what, for you, is the distinction between Sci-fi and Fantasy? I think if you draw that line where most people draw it and think through what Chiang is actually doing, he's on the other side of it.
  - windward 1y ago
    Whatever definition you settle on, it would be more sensible if it didn't disqualify the works that immediately come to mind when we say 'sci-fi' despite them usually exhibiting bad relativity and thermodynamics. I don't think the distinction is meaningful. The lack of a line is why we ended up with the term speculative fiction.
  - tgv 1y ago
    Trying to get it concise isn't easy. There is a cultural, shared definition. Fantasy simply isn't everything that involves fantasy. It has some specific ingredients. It seems to me that the fantastic element in Fantasy is the setting/environment/world where the characters operate, but that setting is not the important part. The story is about the characters, who usually behave realistic (given their options). It also tends to have a historical nature, although not accurate. In sci-fi, there's often an (hypothetical) future setting/environment/world involved, but that doesn't really define the difference. The important part in sci-fi is how the events evolve in and how the characters react to and interact with that world, and how that particular definition of that world determines the outcome. The fantasy part is the main ingredient. It's a thought-experiment. Chiang sets up a world, and his interest is in how that world affects "us" (the characters). It's not about the "arch" of the characters, but it's about the effect the world has on them.

by lmm 1y ago

alexey-salmin 1y ago

It's not impossible from a scientific perspective for a planet to be terraformed and seeded with intelligent life by some overly advanced spices (you can say "god-like"). Or to create a simulation with intelligent life in it and to save some resources by starting 6000 years ago from a complex seed state rather than simulating 16 billion years of physics to see the intelligent life emerge or not. That would be rather inconvenient for the PhD studying simulated intelligent life, he'd better just purchase and rearrange some pre-computed data. The difference between science and religion doesn't lie in disagreement over particular facts or any facts at all, the difference is in the approach. Religion can explain anything but predicts very little (except for sociological phenomena which it predicts rather well). Science is built around making verifiable predictions but doesn't in fact give any answers, only theories that are (mostly) consistent with observable events (so far). They can however agree or disagree over any particular set of facts. Take any religious belief and you can build a scientific world where it is true.

avar 1y ago
> science is built around making verifiable > predictions but doesn't in fact give any > answers, only theories This is just redefining "theory" and "answer" to the point of meaninglessness. Darwin didn't know a lot of things about evolution or biology, and I'm sure he had questions about some of those things. If you could talk to him today you could give him answers to those questions, and the reason for that is that those answers are found in theories and scientific progress in general. But yes, it doesn't provide "answers" in the mushy religious sense, i.e. "what is it all for?". > The difference between science and > religion doesn't lie in disagreement > over particular facts or any facts at all Yes, it does. You're just implicitly excluding all the parts where religious texts make empirical claims about reality as unimportant or allegory, because religion has already lost those arguments. Do you think Galileo clashed with the Catholic church over heliocentrism because the church didn't understand what religion should and shouldn't be making claims about?
- alexey-salmin 1y ago
  The point being, a theory only holds "true" until it's superseded by a better theory. Furthermore, multiple conflicting theories can be in use at the same time in the absence of a good unifying theory. In the end science neither says nor cares what is "true", it just looks for theories that are good at predicting stuff. "Answers" in a common sense are supposed to be "true" and "permanent" or at least that's how I understand the word. EDIT apparently the comment above got extended, so I'll address some of newer points too. > You're just implicitly excluding all the parts where religious texts make empirical claims about reality as unimportant or allegory, because religion has already lost those arguments. No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying all these claims can be as well true in a different (fully consistent and scientific) world. Furthermore, if you assume we live in a simulation then basically anything becomes possible in OUR world too, including Jesus walking on water turned into wine. It's just our simulation overlords had a good sense of humor. The reason why we don't usually consider simulation theories is not because they're false (this can't be proven), but because they aren't practical and don't predict much. Even if we do live in a simulation, this simulation so far seems to follow some consistent internal "laws" so we can as well study those. Not that it means anything, but helps us to exterminate those who neglect these laws so it's a survivorship bias in action.
  - dragonwriter 1y ago
    > "Answers" in a common sense are supposed to be "true" and "permanent" I would argue that answers are supposed to be useful for the purpose motivating the question. Q: What is the price of gas? A1: The number of units of some other good or service demanded by a seller in echange for a given quantity of it. A2: about $4.00/gal A1 is, I would say, both "true" and "permanent". Assuming it is at least approximately accurate, though, A2 is much more of an answer in most cases the question is asked, even though it is at perhaps only approximately and in any case at best transitorily true.
    - alexey-salmin 1y ago
      In that sense yes, I agree that science gives good answers.
dragonwriter 1y ago
> Religion can explain anything but predicts very little (except for sociological phenomena which it predicts rather well). No, it doesn't. I mean, it does the horoscope thing where it makes predictions vague enough that people can retrospectively fit whatever actually happens into them easily, but that's not actually predicting very well.
- alexey-salmin 1y ago
  Religions are to a big extent codified traditions and many traditions emerged and persisted because they benefited their bearers in one way or another. That's fundamentally different from horoscopes.
  - dragonwriter 1y ago
    > Religions are to a big extent codified traditions and many traditions emerged and persisted because they benefited their bearers in one way or another. Religions are a lot more than just codified traditions, but yes, some traditions are have benefits. That doesn't mean that the religion as a whole is good at predicting anything, it just means that they occasionally preserve things that are beneficial. But because what is codified is codified without systematic knowledge of what works or how it works, the preservation of benefit is essentially random with weak selective pressure acting in the aggregate of beliefs, and with a very big "past utility is no guarantee of future utility" even on the bits that are useful, because the utility of the tradition may be tied to conditions that are not preserved, while the tradition itself is blindly perserved.
    - alexey-salmin 1y ago
      > But because what is codified is codified without systematic knowledge of what works or how it works, the preservation of benefit is essentially random with weak selective pressure acting in the aggregate of beliefs But you agree this must be much better than random? Evolutionary pressure on species is also rather weak: unfit specimen survive and fit specimen die due to chance all the time. But look where it got us when averaged over long periods of time. I don't buy the "systematic knowledge of what works or how it works" part. That's what NLP scientists used to say about neural nets while building monstrous systems based on "systematic knowledge of grammar". You definitely don't have to understand "how it works" to be able to make good predictions.
lmm 1y ago
> some overly advanced spices (you can say "god-like") You really can't. They're very different. > It's not impossible from a scientific perspective for a planet to be terraformed and seeded with intelligent life by some overly advanced spices (you can say "god-like"). Or to create a simulation with intelligent life in it and to save some resources by starting 6000 years ago from a complex seed state rather than simulating 16 billion years of physics to see the intelligent life emerge or not. True enough. But such a world would be very different from a world in which the bible was literally true, and a world in which the bible is actually literally true is genuinely scientifically impossible. You would have to redefine an unimaginably large number of things and you would still have a world full of impossible contradictions to the point that nothing could be said. > Take any religious belief and you can build a scientific world where it is true. You can't, because the beliefs are fundamentally unscientific and self-contradictory. There is no possible world in which the god that actually religious people believe in exists as they believe in him; there are possible worlds in which an entity with approximately the same gross physical properties exists, but such an entity is nothing like the actual religious god.
- alexey-salmin 1y ago
  > You can't, because the beliefs are fundamentally unscientific and self-contradictory. There is no possible world in which the god that actually religious people believe in exists as they believe in him; there are possible worlds in which an entity with approximately the same gross physical properties exists, but such an entity is nothing like the actual religious god. Why not? I don't think it's likely and I definitely don't build my life under an assumption that this is true. However I just can't see how this can be ruled out by scientific means. Our world doesn't have to follow any laws at all, this whole thing can be a bad dream of a sleeping giant.
  - lmm 1y ago
    > However I just can't see how this can be ruled out by scientific means. Our world doesn't have to follow any laws at all, this whole thing can be a bad dream of a sleeping giant. If you took that hypothesis seriously you'd still be able to apply predictions and laws. Giving up on trying to understand it is what's unscientific.
breuleux 1y ago
> It's not impossible from a scientific perspective ... to create a simulation with intelligent life in it and to save some resources by starting 6000 years ago from a complex seed state rather than simulating 16 billion years of physics to see the intelligent life emerge or not. I'm fairly certain simulating 16 billion years of physics (or 6000) in a shorter timeframe than 16 billion years (or 6000) is, in fact, scientifically impossible. Mathematically impossible, even, because it leads to absurd consequences such as the simulator being able to simulate itself faster than itself.
- alexey-salmin 1y ago
  In our own universe — sure. In some "bigger" universe it could be entirely possible, ours would fit nicely.
- BenjiWiebe 1y ago
  You wouldn't need to simulate much. If you were a simulation, you could exist right now only, and merely have false memories about everything else.

tgv 1y ago

I think this is a case of trees and forest. Scifi doesn't require "a universe with internally self-consistent scientific laws." Or, if you want to hold on to that interpretation, there is no scifi. Not even the ones that uphold our current knowledge of physics, since that is known to be incomplete. Scifi --to me, but to many others as well-- is a thought experiment in prose. Like any work of fiction, it needs to have some consistency, but certainly not total. We can "suspend our disbelief." The story you refer to is consistent, though. It stays away from details that would break that. It can do that, because (1) realism is not the goal of the story, and (2) a practically omnipotent God is given, which allows every possible scenario.

lmm 1y ago
> Scifi --to me, but to many others as well-- is a thought experiment in prose. Like any work of fiction, it needs to have some consistency, but certainly not total. We can "suspend our disbelief." Then what, for you, is the distinction between Sci-fi and Fantasy? I think if you draw that line where most people draw it and think through what Chiang is actually doing, he's on the other side of it.
- windward 1y ago
  Whatever definition you settle on, it would be more sensible if it didn't disqualify the works that immediately come to mind when we say 'sci-fi' despite them usually exhibiting bad relativity and thermodynamics. I don't think the distinction is meaningful. The lack of a line is why we ended up with the term speculative fiction.
- tgv 1y ago
  Trying to get it concise isn't easy. There is a cultural, shared definition. Fantasy simply isn't everything that involves fantasy. It has some specific ingredients. It seems to me that the fantastic element in Fantasy is the setting/environment/world where the characters operate, but that setting is not the important part. The story is about the characters, who usually behave realistic (given their options). It also tends to have a historical nature, although not accurate. In sci-fi, there's often an (hypothetical) future setting/environment/world involved, but that doesn't really define the difference. The important part in sci-fi is how the events evolve in and how the characters react to and interact with that world, and how that particular definition of that world determines the outcome. The fantasy part is the main ingredient. It's a thought-experiment. Chiang sets up a world, and his interest is in how that world affects "us" (the characters). It's not about the "arch" of the characters, but it's about the effect the world has on them.