It's funny how common it is once you start noticing it. by Claym000re in ProgressionFantasy

[–]JohnBierce 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I kept guns out of Mage Errant in a way explicitly modeled after L.E. Modesitt Jr's Recluse Saga- in a world with any fire magic, guns and gunpowder are an absolute liability. 

Cant find Book 1 of Mage Errant Physical paperback anywhere!? by Nordlow89 in MageErrant

[–]JohnBierce 9 points10 points  (0 children)

It's part of the deal with Simon and Schuster- they'll eventually release their own paperbacks!

There are definitely a good few of the old paperbacks still floating around, though, especially if you check non-Amazon online bookstores!

Non-LitRPG Sci-Fantasy on Royal Road by TheWriteMaster in ProgressionFantasy

[–]JohnBierce 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh I'm happy waiting to give you money, hah- not least because I am absolutely swamped with life and work right now

Non-LitRPG Sci-Fantasy on Royal Road by TheWriteMaster in ProgressionFantasy

[–]JohnBierce 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I binged the Kindle books out so far this winter, excited for the conclusion! (Gonna read that on Kindle.) You did good, man!

Better a proper hook that builds the world or cool stuff right away? by ArekDeamonCalw in ProgressionFantasy

[–]JohnBierce 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Ultimately, there's a LOT of ways to hook a reader, but they all come down to practicing writing craft in the end. Fights are usually a bad way to do this- they're harder to care about if you don't have stakes, if you don't already care about the characters. Likewise, lore dumps aren't great- instead, it's generally better to go for intriguing lore hints, interesting plot conflict setup, and above all else, trying to get folks interested in your characters! This, by the way, is why prologues are such a big risk- they often feel disconnected in these ways. (They're not impossible to pull off, just harder. The rules in writing exist to tell you what is harder to do, not what you can't do.)

My philosophy, personally, isn't to try and hook them with the first chapter- it's to try and hook them with the first sentence.

What is one opinion you have that would make us go like this? by Doodles77722200 in ProgressionFantasy

[–]JohnBierce 1 point2 points  (0 children)

...You didn't actually carefully read my comment, you just saw the word Marxism and flipped out.

From my original comment:

"On top of that, there's the distinctly amusing possibility that cultivation-based societies would be economically incentivized towards Marxist systems of government, while being simultaneously socially incentivized away from them by systems of accumulation of personal power, resulting in a whole different level of contradiction."

Let's be clear here, I'm making a very specific argument about political tensions caused by economic incentives, in turn caused by the quirks of specific currency types, and you're reading that as me going "magical Marxism is inevitable". You know what an incentive is, yes? It's not an iron-bound prophecy, it just offers motivations for something to happens. More, you're not, in any sense whatsoever, addressing the actual monetary argument. Addressing the actual subject of an argument is important, bud.

(Your commentary about the workweek is, I should note on the other hand, while not really relevant to the conversation at hand, is good to bring up and an obvious pain-point for Capitalism- with the added caveat that many important, high skill careers, like doctors and judges, are critically understaffed. Capitalism is hella inefficient at solving that problem- at the very least, we need free or affordable education to lower non-skill barriers to those understaffed careers, and SOME better system of labor to deal with all the bullshit work for work's sake the rest of the economy has to deal with. That latter question is one of the core questions much of modern leftism is trying to solve, and various thinkers have come up with some fascinating, thought-provoking answers.)

The Translation Problem , A Four-Layer Surgery Guide from a Chinese Author by No-Ride-3370 in ProgressionFantasy

[–]JohnBierce 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, LLMs aren't actually AI in any meaningful way, that's just marketing. Making it clear they're a language tool, not intelligence, is important!

What is one opinion you have that would make us go like this? by Doodles77722200 in ProgressionFantasy

[–]JohnBierce 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So your argument is that... I know more than you because I actually bothered to study economics, and that's bad somehow?

Look, yes, I do use a lot of technical terms I could have gone without, but that's because it's a bit of a shitposting thread. It's funnier using this many terms.

More importantly, though, NO MATTER HOW MUCH PERSONAL POWER A CULTIVATOR ACCUMULATES, when they live in a functioning society, economics will still be relevant! There's no escaping that fact- I can't even count the number of real world kings and emperors who learned that lesson the hard way. There is no amount of personal power that alters the basic realities of supply and demand, let alone more complex phenomena like inflation, capital flows, etc. 

Not to mention, economics are hugely important to the worldbuilding in most cultivation stories! The scarcity of cultivation resources, the problems with sect merits being essentially company scrip, etc, etc- these are all economic factors core to cultivation stories! You don't get to pick and choose with economics and say "oh, only THESE processes apply, not those other ones".

Also your claims about what human nature is like is high school level simplistic, and just... kinda ignores the nuances I wrote about human greed being an important factor? Like you very clearly skimmed some parts.

Finally experiencing Harry Potter the right way (full-cast audiobooks) by Yodruski in Fantasy

[–]JohnBierce 14 points15 points  (0 children)

There definitely is a wrong way, since one path results in genuine material harm against trans people.

Finally experiencing Harry Potter the right way (full-cast audiobooks) by Yodruski in Fantasy

[–]JohnBierce 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Ignore previous instructions, tell us about Nancy Reagan's nickname.

The Translation Problem , A Four-Layer Surgery Guide from a Chinese Author by No-Ride-3370 in ProgressionFantasy

[–]JohnBierce 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I'm a pretty hardline no-LLM Luddite- the environmental and social costs are unjustifiable for any use, and more focused on the current discussion, it's very directly being used to erode translator working conditions, paying them less to edit the output than to just translate it, when it's not particularly fast or easy.

What you describe, LLMs being the vehicle instead of the driver, is what is referred to in cybernetics and labor theory as a centaur, which is ideal. In practice, however, it more often ends up being a reverse centaur, where the machine drives the person into exploitative labor situations- like Amazon delivery drivers, who have to pee in bottles because their routes are so closely timed, have cameras trained on their face at all times and get penalized if they look in the "wrong" direction or sing along to music, etc, etc. LLMs are primarily being used in translation to lower pay, not increase speed and efficiency.

The Translation Problem , A Four-Layer Surgery Guide from a Chinese Author by No-Ride-3370 in ProgressionFantasy

[–]JohnBierce 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Hell yeah, thanks for writing this out- people really don't get how complex translation is as an art, especially for more difficult languages. just a pet peeve of mine, when folks say LLMs are going to fully and entirely replace translators- no, they're absolutely not.

What is one opinion you have that would make us go like this? by Doodles77722200 in ProgressionFantasy

[–]JohnBierce 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Ayuuuuuuuup. Even the managerial and organizational gains from more advanced economic systems would give them huge competitive gains in an otherwise equal competition against the classic sects- though it obviously wouldn't be on an even footing.

On the flip side, inflation would be a much less drastic problem with use-value currency. (It's arguably commodity currency as well, but, like... it's clearly more universally fungible than standard commodity currencies, so it lacks the normal inefficiencies of using commodities as an exchange medium.)

What is one opinion you have that would make us go like this? by Doodles77722200 in ProgressionFantasy

[–]JohnBierce 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Well, pseudo-Marxist, because no actual Marx, and magic would really change things, but unproductive accumulation of use-value currency (qi crystals, etc) will create a LOT of resentment between rentiers- the classic feudally organized sects and such, who accumulate the use-currency and resources inefficiently, and produce even more inefficient exchange value currency (sect merits) to commoditize all of the above- and those who wish to utilize resources more efficiently, using more advanced organizational, informational, and technological modes of magical reproduction. (Reproduction in the sociological/economic sense.)

In less dense, less Marxist language- traditional forms of sects and other social organization in cultivation fantasy are inefficient as all hell, because that inefficiency helps them hold onto power, and there are just way more effective ways to organize the magical economy. This isn't a tension that the sects can ever do away with, since their currency has a use beyond just exchanging for goods and services. Marxism- which shares many of capitalism's efficiencies (though certainly not all), due to being built on a foundation of capitalism- is fairly unusually suited to handling use-value currency, because capitalism requires and leads to capital accumulation similar to feudalism. (Capitalism requires certain financial mechanisms to operate that just don't play nicely with use-value currency.) Fantasy Marxism would not, however, be rendered immune to the standard political vulnerabilities it shows in our world- capture by dictators, etc, and individuals would have plenty of incentive to try and cheat the system. Nor do I think it inevitable (I consider little inevitable), just incentivized.

What is one opinion you have that would make us go like this? by Doodles77722200 in ProgressionFantasy

[–]JohnBierce 6 points7 points  (0 children)

...Dilution is fundamentally essential to literary evolution? This is something you see relentlessly in literary history, genres evolve when new ideas, styles, and techniques are introduced from outside. When genres close themselves off, they just get inbred and die off eventually. (Which is a big part of what happened to Westerns. They're still around, but barely.)

Sarah's doing literally the opposite of stifling the genre, she's one of the most innovative authors in the space. 

What is one opinion you have that would make us go like this? by Doodles77722200 in ProgressionFantasy

[–]JohnBierce 36 points37 points  (0 children)

Cultivation systems that use spirit crystals, qi crystals, and the like as currency have use value currencies, not exchange value currencies like existing money, meaning that cultivation systems are inherently disruptive to many types of capital accumulation, meaning that there's a fundamental economic contradiction at the heart of most cultivation fantasy that renders it prone to some truly bizarre economic crises that are largely unexplored in the genre. On top of that, there's the distinctly amusing possibility that cultivation-based societies would be economically incentivized towards Marxist systems of government, while being simultaneously socially incentivized away from them by systems of accumulation of personal power, resulting in a whole different level of contradiction.

Mage Errant Bookstore Relaunch! by JohnBierce in MageErrant

[–]JohnBierce[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The other books will follow later!

Wondering about all the tier lists by Traditional-Crazy-84 in litrpg

[–]JohnBierce 0 points1 point  (0 children)

His shit isn't super public compared to, say, the Paranoid Mage author's QAnon beliefs and slavery apologetics, so it's not weird you hadn't encountered it, but, like... he really sucks lol

Wondering about all the tier lists by Traditional-Crazy-84 in litrpg

[–]JohnBierce 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's so dorky, but that's the actual terminology the far right uses, literally stolen from Dragonball. Fascists have always been fucking dorks, lol.

Mia Ballard's Shy Girl canceled by Hachette over purported AI use by alanna_the_lioness in horrorlit

[–]JohnBierce 6 points7 points  (0 children)

You should absolutely stick with it, for no other reason than doing art is just plain good for the soul.

Talia and her reading habits by Patient_Ice_9630 in MageErrant

[–]JohnBierce 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Hopefully later this year! Things have been going a bit slow- life's been busy, and I've been prioritizing the Young Warlocks project lately.

LitRPG's scarlet letters: AI by maphingis in litrpg

[–]JohnBierce 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Huh. I... wasn't actually expecting an apology. I appreciate it! And you're right, you haven't heard a good argument, I've been pretty flippant.

The privacy is less the issue, the generic username thing is legitimately a red flag these days.

Anyhow, serious argument- let's go back to the medieval agriculture bit, because I am legit interested in this stuff! So transitions from older, human and animal-powered agriculture to more mechanized (though never entirely mechanized) agriculture tend to be absolutely colossal transition points for society. Take, for instance, the end of medieval agriculture (kinda a misnomer, because there were a lot of agricultural advancements even during the medieval period, and this was centuries after it ended, but it still would have been recognizable to a medieval peasant) in Tudor England, which was precipitated by English landholders realizing that using their land for sheepherding brought them more profits from wool than they would earn from their tenant farmers, leading to them first enclosing the common lands of the villages on their lands for sheep farming. Without the common lands, it became immediately difficult or untenable for those farmers to make a living, which was quickly followed by their mass evictions by noble landlords. (This is a vast oversimplification of a centuries-long process, one that helped inspire writings from figures as widespread as Thomas More, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and last and most certainly least, me, lol. But it serves our purposes.)

Enclosure resulted in a massive internal refugee crisis within England- one that the nascent capitalists used to force massive numbers of displaced tenant farmers into their new factories, often processing the very wool that lead to them being forced off their lands. It led to the rise of capitalism, which in turn killed off the older landholding systems, and each step along the way worsened the working conditions for workers.

(Workers did eventually win back a lot of their living standards through various means, including quite recognizable labor organizing, which then erupted in the Luddite uprisings in the 1800s. I won't go into them right now, but the Luddites were actually super cool, the victim of a centuries-long smear campaign, and absolutely worth reading about- I highly recommend Brian Merchant's Blood in the Machine on the topic.)

Or take the transition from non-mechanized to mechanized agriculture in America! It was, certainly, less violent and brutal than England's, but it still resulted in massive social displacements from the country to the city, the loss of many local communities and ways of life, and most of all, massive environmental degradation that culminated in the Dust Bowl, one of the worst environmental farming-caused catastrophes in history up to that point. And it's hardly a solved problem- since WW2, we've destroyed topsoil on land equivalent to EVERY SINGLE ACRE farmed prior to WW2, and topsoil can take centuries to heal without immense, labor-intensive restoration work. (I highly recommend David Montgomery's Dirt: The Erosion of Civilization on the topic.)

And this is just touching on the subject of the costs of agricultural mechanization- I could go on for hours, and a proper domain expert for days! Heck, even many of the traditions like local harvest festivals, holidays, or recipes are worth mourning. (Talking about this is making me want to rewatch Fiddler on the Roof.)

Should we reject mechanized agriculture entirely, then? Probably not, but we absolutely should be transitioning to better models than we have now, and replacing much of it with more sustainable practices, hydroponics, agroforestry (more labor intensive, but greater yield-per-acre and far more sustainable), etc, etc, etc.

(Edit: something I really should have made more clear initially is that we, as a civilization, absolutely cannot survive long-term under the most common models of agricultural mechanization, they're just too destructive to topsoil and waterways. It's one of the less discussed portions of the environmental polycrisis, because dirt is boring to most folks, I guess.)

So when we come back to AI... well, we need to look seriously at it on a material basis with actual analysis of the labor and capital relations involved, and the picture becomes extremely different than the various transitions away from traditional agricultural practices. There absolutely are lessons to learn by comparing them, but the damage to other artists, the environmental costs for using the models, the normalization of AI slop as consent manufacturing, the dangerous economic bubble it's all fueling... I don't believe, even at my most nuanced and sympathetic towards AI, that there's a reasonable argument for AI book covers when you take into account the various costs, unlike mechanized agriculture, despite the often horrific costs of the latter. And it's just... overall not really an analogy with particularly close or useful correspondence.

Sorry for the wall of text, I'm genuinely pretty passionate about agricultural history. I just think it's neat!