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Any Sufficiently Advanced Technology Is Indistinguishable from Cthulhu
- jaibot 11y agohttp://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
- mrec 11y agoOne of my favourite reads ever. Rambling and self-indulgent but holy crap is it spot-on.
- kbenson 11y agoThis exemplifies my love hate relationship with HN. I love that I now have something new to read that is extremely interesting, but I hate that you've just destroyed my productivity for a time span of not minutes, but hours, or even days depending on how deep I go into this rabbit hole.
- jaibot 11y agoIt's been a week and you may be in danger of becoming productive again, so I thought I'd link you to the LJ that the author kept before starting SlateStarCodex: http://squid314.livejournal.com http://squid314.livejournal.com You're welcome.
- radarsat1 11y agoThe description of the genre reminded me of Cabin in the Woods. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1259521/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1259521/ Is it the beginning of a geek take on horror? It was a fun film, and felt very original when it came out, but it was also a bit of a gimmick. I'm not sure it's ready to become an entire genre without becoming very quickly stereotyped.
- splawn 11y agoWith perhaps humor being the exception, it seemed like his description of this new genre almost summed up the themes from Frankenstein. I think horror has always been a "geek" thing. (If that word with its modern meaning can even be retroactively applied)
- thenomad 11y agoHmm, that's a very interesting point. Particularly since I think the "geek" moniker could definitely be applied to the Shelleys. Byron, less so.
- QuantumRoar 11y ago"[...] in order to survive, we need to supplicate ourselves to horrible entities whose motivations we are literally not capable of understanding." Feels familiar. I am trying to protect my privacy to the best of my knowledge but I feel that I'm losing it to several entities whose identities and ends are rather... cloudy...
- thenomad 11y agoIndeed so. I feel a follow-up piece coming on entitled "Ia, ia, Google fthagn..."
- pavel_lishin 11y agoNetworknomicon, the Facebook of the Dead, written by the Mad Student Mark Zuckerberg...
- thenomad 11y agoActually, the Facebook of the Dead is an interesting concept...
- stared 11y agoPeople have their profiles, and then they die. It's inevitable.
- pavel_lishin 11y ago> then they die. It's inevitable. Pessimist!
- pavel_lishin 11y agohttps://what-if.xkcd.com/69/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/69/
- 7952 11y agoThey should put in the terms of service that everything becomes public 100 years after death. It would be an amazing social history.
- milkworsethan 11y agoStop promoting offensive domains here.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 11y ago> the Lovecraftian universe fits extremely well with the universe as understood by geeks. It's a fundementally science-driven place, where all magic is indeed just sufficiently advanced technology. Call of the Cthulu starts with a shared dream, so where's the technology? Several other stories involve dreaming too. Lovecraft is more about programming (programming people and peoples programming) than science. Most Lovecraft characters are introverts much like the geeks, and selfie takers of our auspicious era (meh).
- thenomad 11y agoAt the point when Lovecraft was writing, dreaming was intimately connected with a new, exciting science - psychology and psychotherapy. And the technology's all around - it's explicitly stated both in Lovecraft and subsequent folk who build on the Mythos that the Great Old Ones, the Mi-Go, the Great Race, and others aren't supernatural entities, but aliens with mathematics and magic we don't understand.
- peterwwillis 11y agoMagic is just science we don't understand yet.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 11y agoSqueaked the geeky yet intrepid explorer as he descended the cyclopean steps of the twilit cavern.
- Spivak 11y agoI'm suddenly really interested in his stories because of how the universe was described, but is that really what his writing style is like?
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 11y agoYou tell us: http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/src.aspx http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/src.aspx
- DannoHung 11y agoSnowcrash and a bunch of Ted Chiang's works seem to be in a similar but possibly unrelated vein.
- nilkn 11y agoA tangent: I strongly encourage anyone who is a fan of Cthulhu, Lovecraft, this quote, and video games to try Bloodborne for PS4. It's the best blend of these four elements I've ever experienced, and it still sticks with me months after I finished it.
- thenomad 11y agoGod dammit. OP here - I'm a huge fan of the Dark Souls games too... But I'm trying to hold off on buying a PS4 until there's more than one game I want to play on it.
- s_kilk 11y agoFor what it's worth, I bought a PS4 solely for Bloodborne and I think it was absolutely worth it, plus we have Dark Souls 3 coming down the pipe next year too...
- s_kilk 11y agoSeconded. Bloodborne is wonderful, with a genuinely hideous Cthuloid streak right through it.
- sleepybrett 11y agoI'm going to go ahead and disagree. If you are a huge demon/darksouls fan, bloodborne falls short. I feel like it's not possible to express yourself as fully as you can with the class/character system in DS2 in bloodborne. It's certainly not terrible and it's a nice holdover until DS3... but it lacks. (I do really like the parry and revenge systems though)
- nilkn 11y agoYou're free to disagree, but Demon's Souls and Dark Souls do not touch on the Lovecraftian horror elements nearly as strongly as Bloodborne does, which is the whole reason I mentioned it here. Bloodborne is the only game in the series which is actually relevant to this thread. As for the class/character system, Bloodborne is actually not a Souls game and is deliberately different. I don't really want to get into a big discussion of the game mechanics here, but it took what worked best from Demon's Souls and invested everything in it. Nobody really played with heavy armor in Demon's Souls anyway except perhaps for a self-imposed handicap. Bloodborne is basically a streamlined Demon's Souls with the cruft that didn't work well thrown out and a more explicitly Lovecraftian story and world. DS2 has a lot more variety but also has a large number of basic mechanical issues, such as imprecise hitboxes. Dark Souls 1 probably hits the sweet spot between variety and solid fundamentals. Hopefully Dark Souls 3 marks a return to this style.
- arethuza 11y agoOn a related note - I've thought for a while that Charlie's Laundry series would make an excellent TV series - if for no other reason than it allows me to speculate on who could play Angleton.
- pavel_lishin 11y agoI hereby posit that any choice other than Bill Nighy is a symptom of irreparable madness.
- pkinsky 11y agoI always pictured him a Peter Capaldi myself.
- pavel_lishin 11y agoI've never seen him in anything (not a Dr. Who fan here)
- aaronem 11y agoYou needn't be; "In the Loop" is a British political satire starring Capaldi in, I think, one of his better roles, and besides which is a cousin of "Veep", easily the most on-point US political satire of the last fifty years.
- mikeash 11y agoBut isn't irreparable madness something you'd want in anyone making such a TV series?
- angersock 11y agoA friend presented "Reflections on Trusting Trust" this weekend, and that right there is some downright edlritch shit: https://www.ece.cmu.edu/~ganger/712.fall02/papers/p761-thompson.pdf https://www.ece.cmu.edu/~ganger/712.fall02/papers/p761-thomp... The C2 article on it is basically a bunch of mere mortals trying (and failing) to come to grips with it: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?TheKenThompsonHack http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?TheKenThompsonHack
- kbenson 11y agoThat paper has been one of my favorites since I first read it. That said, assuming a bounded level of complexity in the bug/hack, there are ways to jump from an infected toolchain to an uninfected toolchain, it just requires quite a bit of effort. If you can't assume a bonded level of complexity, well, it then becomes a debate on theology.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- dllthomas 11y agohttp://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/cthulhupunk http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/cthulhupunk
- ArkyBeagle 11y agoApocalyptic narrative is as old as writing. Human understanding also grows with technology - the British Empire only banned slavery around 200 years ago. Dystopian stuff has the same problem for me as horror. All I see is Joe Flaherty as Count Floyd saying "Oooh, scary!" The only horror movie I ever liked was "Alien". Because it was credible. So meh.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 11y agoYep horror is just sci-fi with an even more hackneyed magic system.
- Mz 11y agoOne of the common elements of the Lovecraftian Mythos is that the gods of it do not care about humans and cannot be appeased or swayed or what not. Perhaps this isthe primary takeaway we should focus on when comparing these vastly influential technologies and the people behind them to Cthuloid horrors.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y agoIs this another thread about rogue AI?
- qznc 11y agoInteresting. I currently fiddle around with a little game [0] to brush up my Javascript. It is exactly about this theme: Seeking knowledge to save mankind and Cthulhu. Alpha-quality warning! https://qznc.github.io/IncCth/ https://qznc.github.io/IncCth/ [0] assuming you consider Cookie Clicker et al "games".
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- bitwize 11y agoI'm reminded of A Study In Emerald, a Sherlock Holmes style detective story in a Lovecraftian setting (with a licensed board game which I hear is quite good).