What are you reading, watching and listening to? - All languages

[Ares Land]

I wish we'd see a bit more optimism in contemporary science-fiction. Aurora, which I mentioned, is really, hmm, over-the-top in its committment to depression.
Looking at the latest Clarkesworld, there's not a single story there that isn't horribly bleak.

What would you like to see? There is contemporary optimistic science fiction. Most notably, singularity fiction. Those are pooh-poohed as uncritical trash.

The fact of the matter is, given the current level of technology, it is not easy to conceive of the future as not being more interconnected. See how imposing economic sanctions on Russia devastated economies all over the world.

PS. I thought the first arc of Revolutionary Girl Utena was mind-blowing despite having several annoying anime tropes.

If you got any recommendations, I'd be glad to check them out. (TBH I don't think the singularity works either as science or fiction; but I'm willing to keep an open mind.)

I agree with you that the future will be more interconnected -- but why should it be dystopian?
(I don't expect the future to be utopian either; of course there'll be problems. But it won't be inconceivably grim either!)

[rotting bones]

If you got any recommendations, I'd be glad to check them out. (TBH I don't think the singularity works either as science or fiction; but I'm willing to keep an open mind.)

I don't seek out or even necessarily support either singularity-related or optimistic science fiction. My favorites are actually the dystopias that are so bleak, they're kind of funny. Eg. The Bobiverse series or There Is No Antimemetics Division.

But trying to suppress all my instincts, have you read Aristoi by Walter John Williams? That's probably the best I can remember at the moment.

If you want optimistic science fiction, the Culture series by Ian M. Banks is also good. You've probably read that.

If you're satisfied with the future not being a bleak dystopia, I recommend everything by Andy Weir, who's mainly interested in science-based problem solving. My favorite is his most controversial novel, Artemis. He's super famous, though.

If you're satisfied with dystopias that are not aggressively bleak, try The Clockwork Rocket by Greg Egan. The outlook is bad for our intrepid heros, but that only motivates them to squirm for us in a livelier, more hope-driven fashion. There are pages and pages of intricately worked out alt-physics.

I agree with you that the future will be more interconnected -- but why should it be dystopian?
(I don't expect the future to be utopian either; of course there'll be problems. But it won't be inconceivably grim either!)

The singularity is what you get if you extrapolate interconnectedness to infinity.

[Ares Land]

Thanks for the recommendations!
(You're correct - I have read Banks.)

It seems to me that SF took a turn towards even bleaker scenario after 2000 or so. (Weir is indeed a happy exception.)

The singularity is what you get if you extrapolate interconnectedness to infinity.

Extrapolating to infinity can be fun, but it's not a good idea for prediction. Current trends towards interconnectedness will keep up, but not to absurd levels.

My objections to the singularity is that, mostly, it's treated as something new and unexpected, and as inescapable when actually it's really pretty much the same old robot story.

[rotting bones]

Thanks for the recommendations!
(You're correct - I have read Banks.)

Let me know if you have any recommendations for me.

It seems to me that SF took a turn towards even bleaker scenario after 2000 or so. (Weir is indeed a happy exception.)

Not much really stands out to me in post-2000 science fiction, but what you're talking about seems like an extension of the cyberpunk aesthetic. Think about it: What do I have to be happy about, really? No popular political movement is trying to create a rational society grounded in liberty, equality and fraternity. All serious revolutionaries are actively trying to make the world an obviously worse place to live, soliciting my help in doing so, and acting weirdly surprised and/or judgy when I recoil in horror.

The radical otherness is no longer in robots. It has shifted to fellow humans.

Extrapolating to infinity can be fun, but it's not a good idea for prediction. Current trends towards interconnectedness will keep up, but not to absurd levels.

All prediction is extrapolation. What else is there?

My objections to the singularity is that, mostly, it's treated as something new and unexpected, and as inescapable when actually it's really pretty much the same old robot story.

Another one I can recommend is Greg Egan's Diaspora. Assuming I'm thinking of the right one, the writing is so technical, I remember images rather than whether it's a utopia or a dystopia.

Having thought about it some more, the best singularity story I've read is probably this (non-utopian) pony fanfic: https://www.fimfiction.net/story/69770/ ... conterrens

[Ares Land]

Thanks for the recommendations!
(You're correct - I have read Banks.)

Let me know if you have any recommendations for me.

Recent SF I really liked: Alastair Reynold's Prefect series; N.K Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy, Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice (tho' I didn't care for the sequels), Charles Stross' Saturn's Children and Neptune's Brood, Kate Mascarenhas' The Psychology of Time Travel
(Not mentioning Andy Weir, which you've read.)

Not much really stands out to me in post-2000 science fiction, but what you're talking about seems like an extension of the cyberpunk aesthetic. Think about it: What do I have to be happy about, really? No popular political movement is trying to create a rational society grounded in liberty, equality and fraternity. All serious revolutionaries are actively trying to make the world an obviously worse place to live, soliciting my help in doing so, and acting weirdly surprised and/or judgy when I recoil in horror.

Regardless, there's an interesting paradox in that the world is, if anything, a better place than it was in the 60s -- a time when SF tended more to the utopian.
This goes, interestingly, beyong SF. People generally have a much darker worldview than they used to have, despite the state of the world being, all in all, better.

[rotting bones]

Recent SF I really liked: Alastair Reynold's Prefect series; N.K Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy, Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice (tho' I didn't care for the sequels), Charles Stross' Saturn's Children and Neptune's Brood, Kate Mascarenhas' The Psychology of Time Travel
(Not mentioning Andy Weir, which you've read.)

Thanks, I'll check them out.

Regardless, there's an interesting paradox in that the world is, if anything, a better place than it was in the 60s -- a time when SF tended more to the utopian.
This goes, interestingly, beyong SF. People generally have a much darker worldview than they used to have, despite the state of the world being, all in all, better.

The present is a well of infinite melancholy. Happiness comes from contemplating a halfway adequate future.

[rotting bones]

Recent SF I really liked: Alastair Reynold's Prefect series; N.K Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy, Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice (tho' I didn't care for the sequels), Charles Stross' Saturn's Children and Neptune's Brood, Kate Mascarenhas' The Psychology of Time Travel
(Not mentioning Andy Weir, which you've read.)

Ancillary Justice looks very promising so far.

I just realized that I've already read and enjoyed Saturn's Children and Neptune's Brood. I completely forgot about those!

I'd also recommend the Continuing Time series. Some of those are better than the others. I thought the recent Tales of the Continuing Time was brilliant.

[foxcatdog]

Reading: Nothing i don't read much anymore, last book i read was the harry potter series and i stopped at the start of the last book.

Watching: Last thing i watched was The Batman, it was good the dialouge wasn't the best but it had good action scenes and nice atmosphere.

Playing: Mostly the same game i always play so League. The game i enjoyed the most besides it recently are Hades (which i even got to Elysium my last run) and Forager which is a fun idle game. I also like the 'Craft.

Listening: The best album i listened to recently is the Soft Bulletin by Flaming Lips really fun sweet psychedelic pop but i have heard it before through i have only just now given it a RYM rating. In terms of the best new music i have listened to this year i liked Marchita by Silvana Estranda which was nice lush folk music and especially Dragon Mountain Whatever by Big Thief which seems to be finally justifying Adrianne Lenkers side project since its a great mix of music that can only be played by a band. I really like the song Little Things which sounds perfectly psychedelic with weighted lyrics and sublime delivery which combines well with the psychedelia in between.

[rotting bones]

Positive Leftist News: https://youtube.com/c/PLN_mex
The Whirlpool by Steve Shives (atheist media): https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0-L ... c5oP28nFVB https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0-L ... TAR3R4jBmk
DF Let's Plays by Kruggsmash: Scorchfountain (Necromancer successfully takes over the world) Redvault (Science fiction dystopia) Splatterface (Randos whaling on each other)

PS. I've been mostly playing Baba Is You and the abstract strategy board game Abalone.

[mocha]

DF Let's Plays by Kruggsmash: Scorchfountain (Necromancer successfully takes over the world)

I haven't watched Kruggsmash in too long. I should watch more of his vids.

[rotting bones]

I haven't watched Kruggsmash in too long. I should watch more of his vids.

Objectively speaking, Scorchfountain may be his best work yet. Unfortunately, he didn't seem to enjoy making it. From the looks of it, his work schedule collapsed recently. If he never works himself up to it again, Scorchfountain may be his best work ever.

PS.
ASMR: Somehow, this video successfully cured my procrastination: https://youtu.be/tZYxh5oe8DE

Music: Persona 4 - Heartbeat, Heartbreak: https://youtu.be/P3ue1JPFXEU

[rotting bones]

Having thought about it some more, the best singularity story I've read is probably this (non-utopian) pony fanfic: https://www.fimfiction.net/story/69770/ ... conterrens

On the subject of the singularity, I personally don't think the machines we have currently built are conscious. This is not to say that humans have a supernatural soul. I think some kinds of machines can be conscious, and the human brain is one of those kinds of machines. However, I don't think consciousness is reducible to information processing. In my opinion, mechanical consciousness is orthogonal to information processing. The human brain happens to do both, but a calculator only does the information processing part. I think we could potentially build electronic gadgets that are conscious, but to make one of our current computers conscious, we'd would need a hardware device or an internal card whose only job is to feel things.

I came to this conclusion based on the observation that I'm not conscious of most of the information that my brain processes.

[Travis B.]

Having thought about it some more, the best singularity story I've read is probably this (non-utopian) pony fanfic: https://www.fimfiction.net/story/69770/ ... conterrens

On the subject of the singularity, I personally don't think the machines we have currently built are conscious. This is not to say that humans have a supernatural soul. I think some kinds of machines can be conscious, and the human brain is one of those kinds of machines. However, I don't think consciousness is reducible to information processing. In my opinion, mechanical consciousness is orthogonal to information processing. The human brain happens to do both, but a calculator only does the information processing part. I think we could potentially build electronic gadgets that are conscious, but to make one of our current computers conscious, we'd would need a hardware device or an internal card whose only job is to feel things.

I came to this conclusion based on the observation that I'm not conscious of most of the information that my brain processes.

To me, a conscious machine would be possible because there is no reason why a machine could not simulate a conscious human brain.

[rotting bones]

To me, a conscious machine would be possible because there is no reason why a machine could not simulate a conscious human brain.

I agree that a conscious machine is possible, but I don't think that a simulation of a human brain is necessarily conscious. I think the human brain, aside from executing decision algorithms, has some kind of an additional consciousness "module" or "organ", if you will, that does the feeling part. I think so because I'm not conscious of all the calculations that my brain does. For a computer to be conscious, it needs to do something analogous to that.

[rotting bones]

To me, a conscious machine would be possible because there is no reason why a machine could not simulate a conscious human brain.

Think of it like this. I agree that it's possible for a machine to produce printed pages. However, I don't think that a simulation of a printer can produce printed pages. That's what the mechanism that produces consciousness is like. It's possible for humans to build such machines, but not all machines that simulate them are conscious.

[rotting bones]

ASMR: Somehow, this video successfully cured my procrastination: https://youtu.be/tZYxh5oe8DE

A more relevant factor might be that I've started drinking hot chocolate in the morning.

[Travis B.]

I agree that a conscious machine is possible, but I don't think that a simulation of a human brain is necessarily conscious. I think the human brain, aside from executing decision algorithms, has some kind of an additional consciousness "module" or "organ", if you will, that does the feeling part. I think so because I'm not conscious of all the calculations that my brain does. For a computer to be conscious, it needs to do something analogous to that.

Think of it like this. I agree that it's possible for a machine to produce printed pages. However, I don't think that a simulation of a printer can produce printed pages. That's what the mechanism that produces consciousness is like. It's possible for humans to build such machines, but not all machines that simulate them are conscious.

To me, emulating the human brain is like emulating a processor, in that in effect it is simulating a physical system (a processor is a physical system after all) in software of some kind or another. There is no reason why one kind of physical system can be simulated while another cannot. And with an adequate simulation, the only real detectable difference that one has is speed and resources consumed. Of course, it may take spectacular amounts of processing power and memory to simulate a human brain in software at any useful speed, but that does not mean that it cannot be done. And by this, if a human brain can be simulated, and because human brains are conscious, a computer simulating a human brain can also be conscious. Of course, to make this practical, it may be useful to build specialized processors designed for specifically simulating human brains in hardware rather than relying upon general purpose computing resources designed for sequential computing tasks, but that is another story.

[rotting bones]

To me, emulating the human brain is like emulating a processor, in that in effect it is simulating a physical system (a processor is a physical system after all) in software of some kind or another. There is no reason why one kind of physical system can be simulated while another cannot. And with an adequate simulation, the only real detectable difference that one has is speed and resources consumed. Of course, it may take spectacular amounts of processing power and memory to simulate a human brain in software at any useful speed, but that does not mean that it cannot be done. And by this, if a human brain can be simulated, and because human brains are conscious, a computer simulating a human brain can also be conscious. Of course, to make this practical, it may be useful to build specialized processors designed for specifically simulating human brains in hardware rather than relying upon general purpose computing resources designed for sequential computing tasks, but that is another story.

A printer can be simulated. It would interact with the outer world just like a printer. But it can print only simulated paper.

The human brain can be simulated. It will interact with the world the same way a human would. But it may only have simulated feelings.

I'm not convinced that simulated feelings are identical to those generated by a feelings organ. Simulated paper is not real paper.

[Ares Land]

I think we tend to trip over our own metaphors. It's useful to think of a brain as like a computer; or to think of a computer as like a brain.

But it doesn't look like the analogy holds very far. Brains and computers sort of do the same thing, but:

a) We're not very good at what computers do best, ie. run algorithms very reliably and very quickly.
b) Computers aren't very good at a lot of what our brain does. (With a humongous load of data, a few months of work and constant nursing by a few engineers, you can teach a computer to recognize cats. Babies pick up that skill pretty much instantly.)

Singulitarians conclude that a) means our brains are really a very sucky type of computer and that b) will be solved by throwing more transistors at the problem.

I think a more realistic conclusion is that the brain isn't really very much like a computer at all.

Could we construct an artificial brain? I believe it's possible. The brain is a material object with no magical-mystical properties, and a machine brain could be constructed.
On the other same this assumes we know how the brain works, which we really don't except at a very superficial levels ('this part handles vision, this part is involved in memory, except that part over there influences somehow...')
I'm not a neurologist, but I picked up a distinct impression that we don't even really know what an individual neuron does.

Could we build a model of a brain in a computer? Yes to that too. Science-fiction makes a number of dubious assumptions though.
For instance, somehow brain uploads are functionally equivalent to the original. This assumes a horrendously complex, computationally-intensive simulation.
The view of such a simulation is oddly dualistic. The brain simulation is somehow completely separable from the human body; you can jury-rig a connection to a VR environment or a camera or something. I tend to think you'd have to emulate a complete human body as well, and sensory inputs to match.

So, all in all, from a scientific point of view, the whole premise feels very dubious.

From a fictional premise, I tend to think it doesn't make for terribly interesting stories. Once you get back the technobabble and the dreadful earnestness of it all, you end up with the same old robot story.

[bradrn]

From a fictional premise, I tend to think it doesn't make for terribly interesting stories. Once you get back the technobabble and the dreadful earnestness of it all, you end up with the same old robot story.

Counterexample: Lena, though I suppose that one isn’t really a ‘story’ per se. It does have its own special sense of horror which most robot stories can’t reach. Then again, the author did say it ‘isn’t about uploading’, so maybe this isn’t the best counterexample.

(All of Sam Hughes’s fiction is pretty good, actually. I recently re-read Ed, though Fine Structure is probably my favourite. Ra is also very good, though I refuse to re-read it because it’s just too depressing.)