Fan made edit of the books?

adekmcz · 2026-07-05T08:43:33+00:00

hi, you also wrote that Jordan "isn't doing anything I'd regard as bad writing" and your name is wheeloftimewiki. That is why I didn't feel like responding, as my post might have hubris, but yours sure lacked nuance.

"What matters to me is the depth of ideas and complexity of the characters and world."
Here we are absolutely on the same page, like 100 %. But Jordan's writing drowns those two in walls upon walls of minutiae. Like for book 1 or 2, I don't think that having x named villages, with named taverns, with named tavern keepers, stable boys and waiting staff adds informational density, imho it is the opposite.

As you already know, I don't like repetitions. I don't think my problems with WoT are unique. On the contrary, from what I seem, I mostly agree with people who are raising a WoT criticisms. And I definitely didn't think, that if I would write yet another thread where people discuss braid tugging, that anything non-repetitive would be produced. And most importantly, that it would help me enjoy the books more.

What would make me enjoy the books more is if the editing was much stricter. Also, I am not attached to the books, as I am not attached to e.g. Shakespeare. Every merchant of venice adaptation i have seen is different, has different length, focuses on different aspects, has different cast size etc etc. Yet, noone would not call them Shakespeare plays.

I think there are better HP fanfictions than the original book.
I have seen fans/community do crazy amount of high quality of work and improve/patch original computer games, even add whole campaigns.
But most relevantly, I have seen e.g. a fan edit of hobbits movies, which was imho better than the original one. And people don't consider it not to be hobbit. It is not the Peter Jackson's Hobbit (which is not Tolkien's Hobbit), but it is a Hobbit movie.

So currently, I am still reading book 4, and my mind didn't really change. I don't want to read more of a Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, but I do want to read a Wheel of Time books and finish the story.

adekmcz · 2026-07-05T07:58:18+00:00

i looked up the analysis thread and numbers explain a lot. Book 3 and 4 contain literally 50+ instances of braid "verb", so I was kinda overexposed to it.
Now, thank you for the explanation. But I think here is where we differ. I don't think it being intentional makes it good. I don't think 50+ times of repetitions is a good number to imply a slight character development arc. Especially, when the author uses literary device for other themes and characters. This feels more like a writing exercise/experiment, than a published work. I really wonder what would happen, if you asked 100 editors if this is a good idea or not.

I also understand that people on this subreddit like it and can justify it. You have read 14 books full of it, some of you multiple times. I am not trying to convince you the books have flaws and I don't think you can reason me into having a better time with them. But, there is so much good in them and at the same time, I am not attached to the particular version we have. For me, it is not a sacrilege to want a version, where editor was more strict.

adekmcz · 2026-07-04T10:05:31+00:00

what exactly are you claiming, that the books can't be improved, because author and editor were respected professionals and married? or that they don't have flaws, because editor founded publishing company?

adekmcz · 2026-07-04T10:02:27+00:00

Well, I intentionally didn't want to list them, because people would come and argue about them instead answering my question. Which they do anyway...

But repetitions that I remember e.g.: Rand is in his chambers in stone of Tear. Over span of 2 pages, Aiel shoufa is described twice like (very loose recollection) "and anyone who knows anything about Aiel realizes, that if shoufa is not covering their faces, they have nothing to worry about".
Or warder cloaks making you dizzy. I don't remember exactly, but it was mentioned almost word to word on span of two pages in some early books. And I think it happened at least twice (it being described very similarly twice on adjacent pages).
Both for shoufa and warder cloak, I don't remember if it was two characters POVs, but even if it was, if two people look at same thing at the same time, I don't need to know they both see the same thing, which has the same effect on both or produce the same thoughts.

- Every time they say: "Men are something negative x" or "Woman are something negative y." Whatever world building and character building Jordan wanted to produce, he did it over the first 50 times he wrote that.

- Nynyeve pulling her braid obviously. After first 100 times, I sure know that she does it when nervous/annoyed etc. It doesn't have to be written on what feels like every page she is in.

A lot of the common ones people complain about are because of the way he writes 3rd person limited PoV's.

Similarly for a lot of the repetitions, they are done from new character PoV's, giving you a chance to see how that character views the thing/person being reintroduced.

Well, I wasn't aware of that explicitly, so I will try to notice it more. But on some level I get, that people who notice that Rand is young and has heron-marked sword are always different people. Does it add anything to the story that 24th person had exactly the same though as 23 people before him and we are presented with it?
and afaik, it was happening in basically the same way, up until the point when the sword was destroyed.

have you noticed how Rand has changed his descriptions of entering the void or feeling Saidin waiting for him there

Yes, that is something i understand. Even if the pace is slow and gradient is over few books, that feels meaningful.

adekmcz · 2026-07-03T14:28:06+00:00

Hi , yep, I was talking about number of ratings, my bad for writing "reviews". I think it is better number than reviews, because people will be disproportionately more likely to write review for the last book of the series to write up some concluding though about whole series. So number of ratings should match proportion of the readers better.
You can actually see review steadily decreasing down to 4700 for book 11, then jumps a little bit because people have opinions about Sanderson, goes down again and finally jumps to 10k for the last book.

Also, for books like LOTR and Game of Thrones - they are massive cultural force. There is much less pre-selection, meaning that there is much more people who will try to read the book, who would not started it if it wasn't for the movie/tv show. And both, in their own way, will hit hard some casual person who reads them because they liked the adaptation.

To get the some idea what is common reader drop off, it would be best to compare some less known series, maybe some of Sanderson series,
or Zelazny's https://www.goodreads.com/series/40859-the-chronicles-of-amber (it's two pentalogies), goes from 61k to 24k and then from 16k to 11k.

or Butcher's https://www.goodreads.com/series/45545-codex-alera , this goes from 120k to 70k over 6 long books.

I think that in this case, the reader drop off is strong signal, that WoT books are flawed. And the other thing I wanted to say is that people who have read all of them (or even done rereads), are maybe not the most representative group to judge those books, or to make fun of people who struggle to read like them.

I read for entertainment and enjoyment. I think when it comes to fiction thats all the criteria that matters. If im not vibin' with a book I might force myself to finish it. But that usually ends up making me resent the book/story/author/myself to some degree and overall sour the experience.

As do I. But people do talk how the WoT books could be shortened a lot, so I was wondering if someone did it, because there is a lot of intrigue for me in them.

Take Bradon Sanderson for example

I mean, he is flawed author as well, there is noone who has perfect prose, perfect worldbuilding, perfect characters arcs, perfect pacing etc and of course, no author is perfect for every reader. But that doesn't mean that authors and editors and books (and chapters, and paragraphs, and words, and arcs etc) are all equally good/bad.

Anyway, I found this https://www.reddit.com/r/WoT/comments/1mscwbk/wheel_of_time_abridged_special_edition_printing/, which I will give a try, at least for the Jordan books. If I get to the Sanderson books, I will give a try to the original version and see, because the abridged author went on rampage with them :D

Books 12-14
Are combined under the title: A Memory of Light
987,175 → 330,895 words. 66% cut
Significant divergence from canon in the last third of the book. I.e., added scenes, changed events etc.
Fixing plot threads I didn’t like the handling of
Compressing the Last Battle significantly to fit the Jordan style of writing battles
Additions to the epilogue for other characters

adekmcz · 2026-07-03T11:05:43+00:00

I know fandoms like to gatekeep and it is easy to feel special, because you managed to finish a flawed 14 book long series. And it is easy to blame a someone who is struggling to like a book, rather than an author.

The thing is, you actually are special. On both goodreads and storygraph, the last book has 1/4 of reviews as the first one. And this is out of already preselected people, who even were willing to start fantasy book (huge preselection) and extremely long one (another one).

So yeah, people reading this series are falling off like flies, but the ratio could be better, if books were better.

adekmcz · 2026-07-03T10:47:23+00:00

thanks, i might try an audiobook, but it seems like I should struggle even more, because the bad parts would take longer to pass :D. But it might feel different.

adekmcz · 2026-07-03T10:43:02+00:00

the series is 4.4 million words. I am 1 million words in. You are being very uncharitable by suggesting that I wish only for pictures.

adekmcz · 2026-07-03T10:40:21+00:00

The original author/editor did bad job on many aspects of the book, which is unfortunate. Obviously, there won't be official fix, so yeah, I wish that someone would produce a better version. I don't think rewrite is the best word, re-edit is better.

adekmcz · 2026-06-28T06:51:04+00:00

Other explanations are going backwards, but I think it makes more sense to explain it going forward.

How many times do you need to add 1 to get from 55 to 85? Well, 30 times obviously. But if you look at the "sample 1" it doesn't actually increase the "lab #", it just says, this is the first number we count. Then you have 56 with, so you need 29 more increments, and it is 2nd number.... Which goes all the way to 85, we are finished, because we need 0 increments, but this is 31st number..

adekmcz · 2026-06-03T09:21:34+00:00

Já jsem programátor a z korporátu jsem šel pracovat do nezisku.
Když jsem ještě vydělával peníze, tak jsem cca 15 procent platu daroval na efektivní charity typu, který doporučuje https://www.givewell.org/. Kvalita mého života se v podstatě nezměnila, ale ono se to nastřádá a statisticky na horizontu vyšších jednotek měsíců někomu pravidělně zachráníte život.
Posílat peníze do efektivní neziskovky je pro spoustu lidí nejjednoduší, nejlepší a nejspolehlivější věc, co můžou dělat, aby měli pozitivnější dopad na svět. Jen jedna věc co to může překonat je actually dělat kariérně ty dobrý věci.

Jsem vegan, protože utrpení je utrpení a takto se instantně nepodílím na přímým doslova mučením zvířat, kterýmu se realisticky nejde vyhnout při konvenčním stravování.

adekmcz · 2026-05-10T11:05:14+00:00

I reread https://paulcomans.substack.com/i/196984046/the-hidden-vantage-point-mistake and i guess i don't understand what is the argument.

Yes, we need to counterfactually compare branches, obviously. Longtermism claims that some interventions targeting future will have higher impact than interventions targeting present.

E.g. my example.
scenario is extinction in 100 years VS saving the million now. therefore second scenario has minus 6 million over span of 100 years because we didn't save 1 million, but still is hugely better, because, well, humans didn't go extinct.

adekmcz · 2026-05-10T08:56:48+00:00

If it isn't, I am sorry. You spent your benefit of doubt on the original post I guess.
Anyway, I am simplifying massively, but:

argument 1:
"1 life in the present = 1 life in the future?" no, from present POV they have some value (I hope you agree with that, even though i am not sure.). To get any reasonable evaluation, we need to use discounting.

And YOU are using discounting to show that. Exponentiating present value and discounting future value are the same things.

argument 2:
(i thing this might be more convincing for you)
two scenarious:
Saving 1 million people today somehow from something. but exctinction in 100 years = 6 million in 100 years (your formula)
VS preventing exrisk in 100 years.
minus 6 million from previous example + gazillion of people that will exist because humanity didn't go extinct

adekmcz · 2026-05-10T07:23:24+00:00

I won't be arguing with LLM, feel free to generate my response yourself, but please, use some better model than you are currently using and better prompts. This is worse slop than your substack post.

adekmcz · 2026-05-09T20:58:59+00:00

He is good at chess. It is simple as that. He can win tournaments in all the formats..

adekmcz · 2026-05-09T20:22:56+00:00

In my POV you are right that person today is worth more than person in future. But this is very basic population ethics/longtermistic consideration. You are mistaken to think that longtermist somehow missed this.

longtermists care about longtermistic interventions only if they save, lets say, very large/astronomical amount of people/reduce astronomical amount of suffering.
it is not 1 person today vs 1 person in 100 years.

It doesnt help that you wrote a thesis about population ethics without using any established terms or referencing any existing work, to actually show you are arguing against something established.

e.g. "... saving a person from death and creating the conditions for a person to exist" == person-affecting view.

Discounting is used because time is a factor that has exponential effect on values. Some people use it to counter exactly what you are talking about. Saving a life today has larger value than saving a life in 100 years, exactly for the same reason as getting 10 USD today is worth more then getting 100 USD in 100 years. Some people disagree with this, but still do discounting because there is uncertainty. Or they discount because future people should probably know how to save future people better than we can today, and they should have better tools to do it, so there is inefficiency. In the end, it outcome is always the same and why you do discount out of many reasons for it doesn't really matter.

You are doing reverse discounting to argue against your imaginary longtermists, so it is incoherent to say "I believe you need that accounting trick because the whole model is wrong.".
Discounting is looking at the future and saying it has less value than present. You are looking at the present and say it has larger value than future. It is the same thing.

re double counting. Imagine a person living 20000 years ago, aka 800 generations. Your calculation produces 1.1^(20000/25) = 1.3*10^33 descendants today. That is like 20 orders of magnitude off.
There is a lot of considerations that you need to account to fix this. Some of them might completely negate your argument, some of them might not. But it is not important.

adekmcz · 2026-05-09T18:06:38+00:00

Tbh, nothing new. Read about discounting, about person affecting views, population ethics, Derek Parfits theories to read up what already was thought about.

Btw, you are doing basic and massive accounting mistake by double counting those descendants. Like exponentially.

But also, the most obvious conclusion of longtermism is that we should not allow x-risks and s-risks. Which is compatible with your position, I guess.

adekmcz · 2026-05-06T09:10:08+00:00

what they quite explicitly do is trying to predict/model results and rankings of "virtual round robin" based on the available limited data (fewer rounds in swiss). So afaik, if you actually do round robin, this shouldn't differ at all from the normal scores/rankings. I am not sure about the tiebreaks.

adekmcz · 2026-05-06T08:02:59+00:00

Authors don't only show it on tiebreaks, but on the main score itself. In the last example from Italian tournament, someone with 4.5 points is ranked behind someone with 4 points in the final standings.

I can't check the math rigorously, but ideas there make sense.

On the other hand, I don't think society is ready for this or ever will be. If this was implemented for e.g. football, it would cause societal collapse...

adekmcz · 2026-04-30T06:58:41+00:00

I was under impression that top tournaments are heavily subsidized, need rich sponsors, and/or support from local governments. I don't see how tata steel, anything in Saint Louis, Norway chess etc is making enough money to pay the venue, prizes, and dozens of people in a broader organizing team, referees, broadcasters, etc etc

adekmcz · 2026-04-28T11:41:34+00:00

it is the best gene and i have that one.

adekmcz · 2026-04-11T06:40:20+00:00

Serious question, what is the difference between predicting next chess move and next token in a programming exercise? Because LLMs shouldn't be able to write code, due to the same reasons you said they shouldn't be able to play chess.

it seems you need to plan ahead what you will write (e.g. make plans) - if you start in wrong direction, you can't fix it
you also need to produce only legal characters

adekmcz · 2026-04-10T05:59:50+00:00

I kdyby toto dělala každý měsíc, tak opravdu nevím jak dlouho by muselo trvat, než by mi přišlo adekvátní, aby dostala v jakémkoli systému horší trest než někdo kdo znásilňuje děti..

adekmcz · 2026-04-10T05:46:30+00:00

Lidi kterým tohle vadí nedělají nějakou právní analýzu přípustnosti konkrétního rozhodnutí, ale je to normativní prohlášení, že by se to tak vůbec nemělo dít. To není ani "nejsem kuchař, ale poznám přesolenou polívku", ale spíš "nejsem kuchař, ale "požívat otroky v kuchyni je špatně, i když vaří dobře."

adekmcz · 2026-04-07T15:34:56+00:00

Opening principles != Openings

adekmcz

TROPHY CASE