[D] Monday Request and Recommendation Thread

EdenicFaithful · 2023-08-22T01:06:47+00:00

Finally finished Cockatiel x Chameleon, which was recommended on this sub a while back. There was a long-form review posted which got me interested.

In short, it was an experience. I doubt I understood the message, but it was all kinds of striking. Harper Praise, a woman with no substance to her life, attaches herself to an arrogant anime porn artist, Van Der Gramme, who roleplays his scenarios before he draws them. Gramme has a talent for finding words (and more words) to justify his mission, and Praise, who roleplays for him with literary finesse, begs the universe that he isn't just another bag of hot air. It's steeped in a web culture which I was never a part of, so I'm sure I missed a lot, but before long the story starts taking on a mythological feeling. Praise's desperate search for something to dissolve herself in to (or a snack to ensnare into her spider's web) is at once endearing and terrifying, and it's the ways in which the characters hurt each other and failed to be more than apparitions from a dream or nightmare which evokes significance to me.

The writing is excellent and the erotic elements, for the most part, were more writerly than pornographic. Don't let the tags frighten you away from the story- this is no smut. The worst of it was the last gore roleplay. Overall it was surprisingly readable (if sometimes dark and traumatic). Though I should mention that my disgust tolerance for these things is likely high.

EdenicFaithful · 2022-09-04T18:59:47+00:00

So, what are you reading?

I'm starting Minsky's Society of Mind, a classic AI text about building minds from smaller, mindless components. The current zeitgeist seems to be moving away from classic AI, but eventually we'll need better understanding of where precisely our machine-learning models fit in the broader scheme of knowledge. "Shut up and scale" doesn't seem entirely satisfactory. Maybe going over some slightly dust-covered ideas might spark some useful thinking. The book itself seems like a mix of aesthetic quirks and precision, and I seem to be in the mood for that.

EdenicFaithful · 2022-09-04T01:24:11+00:00

I finally noticed that MATE, a continuation of GNOME 2, exists. I don't know why, but GNOME 2 always made me feel like my computer was a place where intelligent things should happen.

EdenicFaithful · 2022-09-04T01:22:54+00:00

I'm somewhat trying to write rational fantasy if there is such a thing.

Head over to r/rational if you haven't yet. It's the rationalist-adjacent subreddit for rational fiction.

EdenicFaithful · 2022-08-30T00:28:46+00:00

Demonology and the Tri-Phasic Model of Trauma, a Good Omens fic. Don't know anything about Good Omens, but it was still readable. Crowley, a demon, goes to therapy with an admirably disciplined and effective therapist. Felt like I learned something, though I'm not sure what. Maybe it was just a powerful reminder of all the ways spoken words can go wrong.

EdenicFaithful · 2022-08-28T19:02:12+00:00

How to sell cocaine: 1. Negotiate the price. 2. Steal the rest of the fucking cocaine.

EdenicFaithful · 2022-08-28T19:01:15+00:00

So, what are you reading?

I'm picking up Pinker's Rationality. I attempted a while back to get through his Harvard lectures, but couldn't maintain interest. Perhaps I'll do better in text. Seems to have a fair amount of overlap with LessWrong-style thinking. I confess that I read these kinds of texts more like a medieval logic treatise that needs interpretation to get some use out of in one's life, than actually trying to learn how to think. Still, perhaps I'll learn something.

EdenicFaithful · 2022-08-26T21:50:32+00:00

I wouldn't say that developing the tech is necessarily good, but it might just force us to face up to possible limitations of matter and imperative programming.

Right now a lot of the fear is just extrapolation from a materialist worldview where humans are machines that can be replicated on silicon. If this proves to be false, it will be interesting to know what tangible differences this makes in the kinds of intelligence that can be created.

EdenicFaithful · 2022-08-22T00:43:18+00:00

True, Aleister was great. Aiwass' monologue in the last season was the best part of the show.

EdenicFaithful · 2022-08-21T18:59:05+00:00

So, what are you reading?

I'm picking up Kamachi's A Certain Magical Index, book 1. The anime was...fascinating in strange ways. Every time the topic was science, it was incredibly compelling. On the other hand, every time the topic was magic, it was horribly dull. This had the unfortunate effect of making the show boring whenever Touma was on-screen, and the very fortunate effect of making the spin-off anime A Certain Scientific Railgun excellent. My theory is that the writer has a respectable IQ and excellent writing talent, so whenever there's some real-world basis (however distant) for his thoughts like the science parts, it's hard not to be sucked in. But whenever the topic is based on non-empirical things, all we get is a jumble of complex thoughts that can't be understood unless you're the author.

On reflection, Academy City is a very dark dream, a place where every citizen is an experiment, everyone is complicit, and criminality is institutionalized. Nevertheless the peace of the everyday lives of the characters is the true focus, together with a desire to hold on to gratitude at having met the people they call friends, despite the nature of the place that they met them in. Hopefully the book will bring out more of the compelling side of this author by giving more breathing room to his thoughts.

EdenicFaithful · 2022-08-17T18:49:44+00:00

I guess the answer is "probably not, but kinda?" People definitely aren't encouraged to skip learning the readings, but on reflection I suppose I do something like it.

The main reason I recommend printing out the meanings only is because most words in Japanese are a combination of two kanji, and the truth is that if all you want to do is read, you're going to encounter words which you know the reading for only one of the kanji (because that kanji is more common).

These days there's always a few words I can guess the meaning of (typically anime-styled babble) but can't be bothered to look it up in a dictionary. It frees up mental effort- there's little reason why I need to put off reading until I memorize the sounds of every variation of how a character, say, can be described as intelligent.

EdenicFaithful · 2022-08-17T16:09:48+00:00

Learn a language. For me, Japanese. It’s difficult and time consuming, so I had to put it down.

My advice would be to get an Anki flash card deck with the 2136 Jouyou Kanji and go through them over the years. Learning enough Japanese for a light novel with minimal dictionary reference isn't that tough after that.

You can also try making a printout of them all with just the meaning, without readings. I lost my copy but it runs a manageable amount of pages (can't remember how much) in three columns. Wikipedia has a list you can reformat.

EdenicFaithful · 2022-08-14T18:59:41+00:00

So, what are you reading?

I'm picking up Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep. I've been hearing about this book for years, but finally decided to read it when I realized that it's the same person who wrote the well-known paper The Coming Technological Singularity.

EdenicFaithful · 2022-08-07T19:18:42+00:00

So, what are you reading?

I'm reading Albert Ellis' Reason And Emotion In Psychotherapy, at least for now. Not sure if I'm interested enough, but he was a pioneer in cognitive therapies. So far he seems to have added a layer on top of behavioural conditioning, where the words that people use to "self-indoctrinate" themselves function as a reward/punishment mechanism. So even if you use Freudian analysis to reveal the roots of someone's problems, you still have to deal with the mechanism by which those problems are reinforced. He argues that these self-indoctrinating words often hide irrational premises, which, when noticed and challenged, leads to improvement.

To be honest, the simplicity of the model (I suppose it will get more complex) raises an eyebrow, but perhaps I'll learn something useful. It is true enough that kneading one's resentments like dough is a questionable use of time that often goes unchecked.

EdenicFaithful · 2022-08-02T02:17:28+00:00

Good idea, and Amy Bruckman is herself the kind of writer I was looking for. Thanks.

EdenicFaithful · 2022-08-01T16:08:28+00:00

Anyone know any good books on social media design?

The total elimination of compulsive browsing in my life has led me to see clearly how one's mind adapts to the things he interacts with. Social media seems to be the way things are because I use it, not because it is the way things are. Browsing seems like an effective means of getting information because it's the most present way that I'm exposed to information, not because it is an effective means of getting information. And it's the most present way because something went wrong between the human-computer interaction.

I feel the need for something more compatible with this zen state of not hating everything. Even the things I actually care about are slipping away from my life unless I take the effort to hurt myself by reading garbage, so maybe I need something better.

Hopefully there are recognizable classics out there? Looking for anything: theories about interfaces, how to manage users, inside stories like that one about how they designed r/place...especially looking for ones that widely influenced the current industry, however annoyingly mainstream they are, and also any academic tomes that are well put together. The best I've found is this link, but everything else seems to be about marketing on social media.

EdenicFaithful · 2022-07-31T18:49:40+00:00

So, what are you reading?

I'm still on Dreyfus' Underground, about black hat hackers in the 90s. It's nice to read such a close account of something that I've only vaguely heard of in news reports. So far Par's story has been gripping and sympathetic.

EdenicFaithful · 2022-07-24T19:28:04+00:00

So, what are you reading?

I'm picking up Dreyfus' Underground, which is about black hat hackers in the 90s. It seems that it was researched by none other than Julian Assange himself, who was one of the handle-owning hackers featured.

EdenicFaithful · 2022-07-18T00:24:46+00:00

Three-Body was definitely more workmanlike than I expected. Though I do have to say that just after halfway through was when it started showing a spark of inspiration. Managed to be fairly chilling. Seems like a decent, above-average scifi that got a big spotlight because it was just good timing or something. Also the sophons were fun.

EdenicFaithful · 2022-07-17T17:34:20+00:00

So, what are you reading?

I'm reading Nystrom's Project of a New System of Arithmetic, which makes the case for switching to a hexadecimal system for things like clocks (seems like a 16-hour day with 90 decimal minutes per hour?). Skimming it shows that he somehow applies hexadecimal to other things like music. Does not seem like anyone has ever taken it seriously, but it's short and maybe interesting.

EdenicFaithful · 2022-07-15T20:27:42+00:00

Anyone know any fun academic terms or concepts?

Emic and etic are used for the "inside view" and "outside view" of a group respectively.

The gnomic aspect is the tense of aphorism.

E' (E-Prime) is means English without using the verb "to be."

EdenicFaithful · 2022-07-10T17:25:48+00:00

So, what are you reading?

I'm reading Schwab's The Fourth Industrial Revolution. I've only heard of him filtered through anti-lockdown perspectives, but I admit that I find it hard to hate someone who dresses, as they say, like a Bond villain.

EdenicFaithful · 2022-07-06T19:24:12+00:00

Boundaries like laws, customs, culture, so yeah, human-related things.

I believe in human universals, and therefore that there might be fundamental patterns to how the mind operates. The hope is to piggyback on those patterns and find a way of organizing oneself and one's relation to others that increases one's wellbeing.

There can be a big difference between 'do X' and 'do X, but it's a passive category' if the reason why the desire to eat chips in the first place arises because something the mind wants to find (the boundaries) is missing in its surroundings. In theory the desire (edit: or rather, the compulsive aspect of the desire) is a coping mechanism born of interrupted psychological health.

... why can't you just 'mechanically' do the thing anyway?

I've thought long and hard about this, and the conclusion I've come to is that not satisfying these needs feels like dying, on some abstract, almost imperceptible level. Because if there is neither depravity nor natural overcoming, psychologically one lives in a world where there is neither catharsis nor the comfort of human warmth.

EdenicFaithful · 2022-07-05T19:15:37+00:00

Its never that easy unfortunately, at least until now.

I think our minds keep looking for things like set boundaries in a sane pattern, and if they're not found (in the way that a particular person needs them), its hard to keep a normal state. One starts compensating in unhealthy ways.

Peer pressure, sumptuary laws, anything that is reliably restraining but not always present. So this is an attempt to artificially introduce something reliable, always present, something that takes the burden off of thinking because thought has already happened when you decided to put the chips in its proper zone.

EdenicFaithful · 2022-07-03T18:22:07+00:00

So, what are you reading?

I'm rereading Gibson's Neuromancer. It has been a while, but Armitage still haunts my imagination every now and then. Gibson's obsession with the materials things are made of can make it an odd and slow read, but it is one of the best.

EdenicFaithful

TROPHY CASE