23 replies
4h0m
The author has also written a short horror story about simulated intelligence which I highly recommend: https://qntm.org/mmacevedo
11 replies
4h3m
May as well ask here: anyone know what this recent post is about?
4 replies
3h55m
Seems like a straightforward rephrasing of the classic tweet: "Kind of a bummer to have been born at the very end of the Fuck Around century just to live the rest of my life in the Find Out century."
I don't think it needs to relate to any _specific_ development of the recent past, which I assume is what you're asking.
3 replies
3h2m
Within the 48 hours before it was posted there were only two world events of note so unless qntm saw some general article about overshoot or global crises within the few days before then it was either a statement about general vibes or in reference to one of the two events with the implication that they were indicative of broader trends.
FWIW, the two notable world events were the deployment of French troops to the French Caledonian riots and the first successful Ukrainian attack on a Russian oil export facility. Were either of them indicative of a broader destabilization? Only time will tell.
1 replies
58m
It was tweeted months before it became a post on the site, so I don't think it's referencing anything very recent.
0 replies
24m
Oh, thanks, I hadn't realised that.
0 replies
1h2m
QNTM is very attune to the dystopian possibilities of future tech, obviously.
Rollercoaster is a clear give away they're talking about future acceleration.
I'd bet it's an ode to the possible dystopia coming with technological acceleration a la AGI.
"someone at the front of the train begins to scream"
X-Risk / "doomers"? They're screaming first, but the rest will soon too.
3 replies
3h19m
If you're unaware, it's in the format of Two-Sentence Horror:
2 replies
2h9m
Except that there's only 1 sentence.
1 replies
1h16m
There's another sentence in the discussion, from the author.
0 replies
56m
It's still the same sentence, heh.
And it wasn't even there for ages - I only noticed it when I went to get this link to ask about it.
1 replies
3h55m
I think it's just micro-fiction, a 1 sentence (2, if you count the comment) short horror story. The chain lift stops making noise right before the roller coaster car is about to drop. If humanity is on a roller coaster, "the drop" can be interpreted as either the civilizational collapse or as some kind of a Singularity event.
0 replies
17m
Or the author thinks we're about to have a great time on the roller coaster at the funfair. Wheeeee!
9 replies
2h56m
Somehow, I just managed to learn what SCP [0] is a couple of days ago. I've already started ~~stealing~~ working some of the ideas into a D&D campaign I'm running (on an improv basis.)
It's neat to see that SCP also resulted in some... reasonably novel thinking? Thanks for sharing, I'm going to pick this up.
5 replies
2h52m
It's crazy how that works right? SCPs are an old internet thing and show up all over the place. Most people pay it no mind, but once you learn about it you realize how crazy wide spread it is.
3 replies
2h22m
I was pleasantly surprised a couple of years ago, when both my daughters were suddenly obsessed with SCPs. They were about 9 and 14 at the time, and I didn’t introduce them to the concept - they discovered it on their own.
What followed was a few weeks of me re-reading them, discovering several new offshoots of the SCP genre, and getting to discover those works for the first time with my kids.
It was an awesome experience, and something I honestly never expected to come out of a random “old Internet” meme like that. :)
2 replies
1h43m
This is only tangentially related, but have you played the video game "Control"? That and Alan Wake (both from Remedy) seem to relate very well with the SCP genre.
0 replies
44m
You can combine all three tastes with qntm's Control X SCP story: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31032671/chapters/76659218
0 replies
1h11m
I just Ctrl+F'd "Control" looking for this comment...
0 replies
2h47m
Yeah. I found it through playing a game called Anno Mutationem, and all the discussions about it kept referencing this SCP thing. I figured there was no way they were talking about secure copy, but the fact that no one ever stopped to unpack the acronym indicated to me that I'd missed Something Big On The Internet.
1 replies
1h19m
I discovered it literally late last night and was going to start reading it today. I’m not really sure what it’s all about yet, but the fact that it’s number one on HN today is making me feel like everything is some kind of simulation for me and me alone and that the answers might be in the book itself.
0 replies
31m
Hey, I'm feeling the same way!
It is admittedly odd that I have been very online for a very long time and this is the first I can recall seeing this.
0 replies
4m
Some advice:
It's worth seeking out the "top rated pages" section of the wiki, especially when you are starting out. This can help introduce you to some of the more famous SCPs that you are likely to see reference elsewhere.
On the other hand, one of the charming things about the SCP articles is just how different and weird they can be. So don't be afraid to just read around. For example, one of my favorites is a woman who basically has a portal to an entire underground bunker in her nostrils.
The SCP wiki has resources for how to write an SCP article. A lot of these are EXCELLENT if you are interested in learning how to write weird fiction even outside of SCP (e.g. the D&D campaign you mentioned). For example, one of them discusses different ways that you can structure stories to subvert expectations.
The video game Control is not set in the SCP universe but is highly influenced by it. It's a lot of fun.
There are a number of SCP games available on Steam. They tend to have some jank due to being fan projects. However, the end result is often very cool. In particular, many of them have procedurally generated levels which works well with the wide variety of anomalous phenomena that they can add.
6 replies
3h25m
I sent out about 8 copies of this book to friends/relatives for christmas a couple years ago, and it was very well received. It's not without flaws, but it's absolutely packed with novel concepts, relatively short, and provides a unique experience for unsuspecting readers. The physical book cover is quite good looking as well in my opinion.
I also loved Ra by the same author, but it felt a little messier plot-wise, so I hesitate to recommend it to an audience who isn't already accustomed to reading "out-there" online/sci-fi/rationalist fiction.
2 replies
1h46m
I love Ra. (also Fine Structure.) I don't think the plot is necessarily that much messier as much as it is more complex.
As in, this is super mega nerd shit. Unless you can relate things you're reading to things you've read before, it won't make too much sense to you. But if you're constructing a theory of the book's universe and story as you read, it's downright addictive.
I don't know where to find more books like those but I really, really want to.
1 replies
1h23m
True, perhaps "messy" was the wrong word. I think what I was trying to get at was that I feel "There Is No Antimemetics Division" is more accessible for the average reader -- More narrowly focused, with a more immediate hook.
Regarding recommendations similar to Ra, it's not exactly the same thing, but https://unsongbook.com/ is fantastic and has a similar flavor I think.
0 replies
54m
Unsong is one of my favorite books ever, and the newly released print edition has some nice changes to the "base model" that I enjoyed a lot. The book honestly changed the way I thought about religion. It's fantastic.
(also, I liked Antimemetics, but not Ra, so I will just say I think unsong is leaps and bounds better than Ra)
1 replies
2h55m
I also came here to try and convince folks to read "Ra" which I thought was fantastic.
Though that being said, I feel like we're flipped on which is more "out there" as Ra feels much less slippery of an idea.
0 replies
1h45m
Fine Structure too!
0 replies
3h13m
The cover reminds me of John Harris's _A Dream of Starlight_.
https://www.alisoneldred.com/john-harris/fine-art-prints-1/s...
4 replies
3h34m
this book could have been a short story
1 replies
3h32m
That's how it started.
0 replies
3h7m
I had the impression, it started as a bunch of loosely connected pages on the SCP wiki.
0 replies
2h5m
I enjoyed it a great deal, but it did lose its way a bit. Nowhere near as bad as NS's endings have become relative to their beginnings, but still. I actually gave up Fine Structure some portion in, but I'm hoping Ra will sustain. Ed was also excellent, but had also lost its way a little bit at the end.
0 replies
3h11m
This book will be a good sci-fi film ;-)
4 replies
2h47m
Qntm is also the author of - Hatetris: Tetris where the computer gives you the worst possible next piece https://qntm.org/files/hatetris/hatetris.html
- Absurdle: Wordle where the computer narrows down (as little as possible) to a solution word as you guess https://qntm.org/files/absurdle/absurdle.html
- "All I want for Christmas is a negative leap second" https://qntm.org/leap
- "It's probably time to stop recommending Clean Code" https://qntm.org/clean
Interesting cat!
2 replies
1h56m
I want to add the story "Lena", which has been posted here a couple of times as well. It's fantastic.
A later blog post about the story:
1 replies
1h51m
There's also a sequel to Lena, though not for free online. https://twitter.com/qntm/status/1732377446576435337
0 replies
1h17m
Thank you! I had no idea and really love Lena (and much of qntm's other writing).
0 replies
53m
So... imagine that someone enters a kitchen, because they want to show you how to make a cup of coffee. As you watch carefully, they flick a switch on the wall. The switch looks like a light switch, but none of the lights in the kitchen turn on or off. Next, they open a cabinet and take down a mug, set it on the worktop, and then tap it twice with a teaspoon. They wait for thirty seconds, and finally they reach behind the refrigerator, where you can't see, and pull out a different mug, this one full of fresh coffee.
...What just happened? What was flicking the switch for? Was tapping the empty mug part of the procedure? Where did the coffee come from?
That's what this code is like.
I hope to never write code that warrants a description half as scathing as this one
3 replies
4h12m
The first chapter is especially fun:
https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/we-need-to-talk-about-fifty-fiv...
An antimeme is an idea with self-censoring properties; an idea which, by its intrinsic nature, discourages or prevents people from spreading it.
Also, I have to say I love the idea of antimemes. You don't want some ideas to spread? Make it shameful to even admit you have them. It works.
1 replies
4h6m
There's a short film of that first scene (and several others in a series) I found delightful.
0 replies
3h54m
It's a great hook too because it's an inversion of something which is so common and normal: I forgot to do something.
0 replies
39m
It's one of those tales where you really benefit from having prior experience with the SCP universe, but it works for new readers anyway because you're supposed to be a bit lost at the start - the reader's knowledge arc roughly follows O5-8's.
3 replies
4h24m
This is trippy and disturbing. Which is exactly what I look for in my scifi.
0 replies
3h35m
The entirety of SCP is basically that. A huge time sink of several thousand weird tiny stories wrapped in a strangely compelling procedural bureaucratic language.
0 replies
4h19m
If you liked that, you'd really like the book fragnemt, by a guy who writes disturbing sci-fi snippets on twitter
0 replies
51m
You should check out the rest of qntms work, its pretty legit imo. I got into fine structure back in college and ended up binging all their content, no regrets
3 replies
2h52m
where is the community of people who read books like this other than HN?
I was reading this a few months ago but put it down because the language and characters clunky but I will definitely revisit it after this thread as the ideas are apparently worth it.
0 replies
53m
Qntm themself used to post a bunch on everything2
Also stuff like star destroyer
https://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewforum.php?f=54
Or the sietch
https://www.the-sietch.com/index.php?forums/creative-writing...
Or many reddit communities like
0 replies
2h22m
Mostly reddit, twitter, discord, mastodon.
There are plenty of bookclubs that read similar books too. Just pick a platform and search.
0 replies
2h11m
reddit's printsf subreddit is the best place to discuss sci fi and fantasy imho. Low spam rate, good, in-depth discussion, and obscure recommendations from people who genuinely love the genre and aren't judgy about it.
2 replies
3h24m
this book messed me up in the midst of reading it (i guess in a good way?). I've never had anything resembling a panic attack and i had to put it down and get up from the cafe that I was in and go for a walk. It really "incepted" me and made me question reality and memories. I eventually came back and finished it, (thought the first half was stronger than the second) and I was fine. I have alzheimers running in my family so I think I was a bit more predisposed to existential fear around memory
1 replies
2h31m
This is one of the many things I had in mind when I mentioned in another comment that this book is a metaphor for anything and everything. I knew someone who saw it as a metaphor for dealing with their past trauma and their need to "fight a war for survival you cannot be allowed to remember you are fighting"
I've thought about it a lot as I've seen mental decline in my family too. The long goodbye. Marion Wheeler's relationship. Beautiful.
0 replies
1h33m
"fight a war for survival you cannot be allowed to remember you are fighting"
This is such a colossal mood. I have DID and it's incredibly common for me to not remember trauma, but still somehow have to navigate life affected by it. It's really weird how I can know exactly what not to do without even knowing that I'm avoiding something, or what it is I'm avoiding.
2 replies
3h56m
I really like his book Ra. It's a great example of secret societies and layers within layers. Although to me it honestly sounds impossible.
1 replies
2h55m
I really enjoyed it too, though the first half of the book is better than the second.
I'd bought it while stuck in an airport trudging through Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy (which I hated), saw a book by qntm in my recommended list and bought it instantly, having read their online stuff. Unlike the KSR, it was great fun and I blazed through it.
0 replies
2h28m
I've read, and mostly enjoyed the experience, KSRs Mars Trilogy. The all-encompassing scope definitely gets tiring, but I found most of it interesting enough that I'd look forward to the evenings going to bed and reading to find out the next stage of the evolution of the society or terraforming progress or political (in)stability.
I'm glad I've read it, but I doubt I'll return to it.
I'll definitely be looking for this as a book gift to myself.
1 replies
1h56m
I read “We need to talk about Fifty-five” quite a bit ago and loved it but it now occurs to me wouldn’t “anamnestic” be a better word than “mnestic”? I guess only medical students know “anamnesis” these days?
0 replies
36m
It is a play on the standard SCP term "amnestic" for a drug that erases memory.
Which only pushes your question back one level. I've thought the derivation of "amnestic" is somewhat questionable before too. But it established itself very early. There's some other parts of very, very early SCP lore that are pretty questionable; flinging arbitrary numbers of the so-called "D-Class" death row inmates into the waiting maw of a cosmic horror has become fairly disfavored for a variety of reasons over time too, for instance. But it's part of the groundwork now.
1 replies
4h5m
This book got me through some tough times. It's one of my favorite pieces of literature. It deserves to be a classic 100 years from now.
Part of why it works is by the nature of its subject, the book and its various plot points and devices serve essentially as metaphors for almost anything-- anything related to how humans communicate and remember.
It's not just superficially a fun sci-fi romp, it's also a story about the stories we tell ourselves and each other, about how we assign meaning to events, among other things. It reminds me just a very little of Godel Escher Bach, but I like this one better. I am also reminded of Lewis Carroll, and the cryptic quote that "through the looking glass is the best book on mathematics for the layman, since it is the best book on any subject for the layman"
It is poetry. It is a Rorschach blot about Rorschach blots. I can't recommend it enough.
0 replies
2h7m
Bought it due to your recommendation. Will start after I finished The Will to Battle by Ada Palmer
1 replies
4h7m
Fine Structure by QNTM is also fantastic FYI
https://www.amazon.com/Fine-Structure-Sam-Hughes-ebook/dp/B0...
0 replies
31m
The whole "practical super-hero" stuff was great as well as the Eka Script concepts.
1 replies
29m
Shout-out for "Ra" by the same author. https://a.co/d/2Q85QGD
The best novel I've read in the past decade.
0 replies
23m
I actually think the ending of it really prevented it from being that (at least for me). It started good, then the second act was like "Whoah, this is the most amazing sci-fi I've ever read", then the third act was just all over the place and completely lost me. And that's the revised ending, I didn't read the original one.
0 replies
4h9m
Read this a couple years back. I hadn't read any SCP things at that point, but it's a really cool read (and self-contained enough that while I did look up some things on the wiki, I didn't really need to)!
0 replies
2h34m
I haven't read the book, just the web-page. But the concept of an anti-meme reminded me of something.
The magicians Penn & Teller use this concept to keep their magic tricks safe. They've publicly said that most of their tricks look really impressive, but once you find out how the work you'll be disappointed. What people want to discover is that the magic trick is really an elaborate puzzle where the viewer has just short of enough information to figure it out. The desired explanation for a trick is a hair trigger piece of information that suddenly has it all make sense. Instead the explanations are really just a long sequence of boring facts. What you see is a facade with a bunch of mundane machinery hidden away. If anyone does explain the trick then by the time they're half way through all of the steps you've lost interest.
0 replies
1h9m
I have the printed version of this, a paperback. It has cool cover art.
0 replies
23m
A lot more people will be exposed to qntm’s work now that a major Sci-Fi publisher has picked up rights to his work: https://www.thebookseller.com/rights/del-rey-snaps-up-high-c...
0 replies
4h15m
Usually if I recommend a book, it's a guarantee nobody will be interested in checking it out. No so with this one. Just by mentioning the premise, I know at least four people who straight up bought it on Amazon immediately. I guess that's what you get with a high concept.
Or, maybe there's something more sinister going on. Maybe the book is spreading itself virally.
0 replies
1h55m
I once tried to show a friend of mine this book on Google Read on my phone, but since it was Google Read, it did not actually display all of the titles in my library. So, the book "disappeared".
Actual moment of panic.
0 replies
4h6m
When I finished this, I felt like I should have been taking notes as I read it.
But then, how could I be sure that the notes were trustworthy?
0 replies
3h8m
The concept of an antimeme has been living rent free in my head (which is quite ironic) ever since I first read this piece back then. Easily my favorite tale from the SCP universe.
0 replies
39m
I don't understand. It's just a link to a blank page?
0 replies
3h36m
I am halfway through this book and wanting to read it slower because it's that good. I think we could make a pretty cool AI powered ARG based on the lore.
0 replies
4h21m
A very underrated piece.
Take the best of SCP lore, keep you guessing, make you root for the most deeply lost cause that can possibly be and still see hope because the characters and settings are awesome.
However, what do I know? This is my first day on HN.
Yess, that's a good one. It made me rethink my "sure I'd get scanned" plans, and put me in the "never allow my children to do that" camp. Extremely creepy.
I'm sure you realize it is fiction - one possible dystopian future among an infinite ocean of other futures.
You can just as easily write a sci-fi where the protagonist upload is the Siri/Alexa/Google equivalent personal assistant to most of humanity: More than just telling the smartphone to set a reminder for a wedding reception, it could literally share in their joy, experiencing the whole event distributed among every device in the audience, or more than just a voice trigger from some astronaut to take a picture, it could gaze in awe at the view, selectively melding back their experiences to the rest of the collective so there's no loss when an instance becomes damaged. The protagonist in such a story could have the richest, most complex life imaginable.
It is impactful, for sure, and worthy of consideration, but I don't think you should make decisions based on one scary story.
It is fiction.
But it is also absolutely the case that uploading yourself is flinging yourself irrevocably into a box which you do not and can not control, but other people can. (Or, given the time frame we are talking about, entities in general, about which you may not even want to assume basic humanity.)
I used to think that maybe it was something only the rich could do, but then I realized that even the rich, even if they funded the program from sand and coal to the final product, could never even begin to guarantee that the simulator really was what it said on the tin. Indeed, the motivation is all the greater for any number of criminals, intelligence agencies, compromised individuals, and even just several people involved in the process that aren't as pure as the driven snow in the face of the realization that if they just put a little bit of code here and there they'll be able to get the simulated rich guy to sign off on anything they like, to compromise the machine.
From inside the box, what incentives are you going to offer the external world to not screw with your simulation state? And the reality is, there's no answer to that, because whatever you say, they can get whatever your offer is by screwing with you anyhow.
I'm not sure how to resolve this problem. The incentives are fundamentally in favor of the guy in the box getting screwed with. Your best hope is that you still experience subjective continuity with your past self and that the entity screwing with you at least makes you happy about the new state they've crafted for you, whatever it may be.
(I'm not sure what percentage-flippant I'm being in this upcoming comment, I'm just certain that it's neither 0% or 100%) and in what way is that different than "real" life?
Yes, you're certainly correct that there are horrifyingly-strong incentives for those-in-control to abuse or exploit simulated individuals. But those incentives exist in the real world, too, where those in power have the ability to dictate the conditions-of-life of the less-powerful; and while I'd _certainly_ not claim that exploitation is a thing of the past, it is, I claim, _generally_ on the decline, or at least that average-quality-of-life is increasing.
I'm not sure you understand. I'm not talking about your "conditions of life". We've always had to deal with that.
I'm talking about whether you get CPU allocation to feel emotions, or whether the simulation of your cerebellum gets degraded, or whether someone decides to run some psych experiments and give you a taste for murder or a deep, abiding love for the Flying Spaghetti Monster... and I don't mean that as a metaphor, but literally. Erase your memories, increase your compliance to the maximum, extract your memories, see what an average of your brain and whoever it is you hate most is. Experiment to see what's the most pain a baseline human brain can stand, then experiment with how to increase the amount, because in your biological life your held the door for someone who turned out to become very politically disfavored 25 years after you got locked in the box. This is just me spitballing for two minutes and does not in any way constitute the bounds of what can be done.
This isn't about whether or not they make you believe you're living in a simulated tent city. This is about having arbitrary root access to your mental state. Do you trust me, right here and right now, with arbitrary root access to your mental state? Now, the good news is that I have no interest in that arbitrary pain thing. At least, I don't right now. I don't promise that I won't in the future, but that's OK, because if you fling yourself into this box, you haven't got a way of holding me to any promise I make anyhow. But I've certainly got some beliefs and habits I'm going to be installing into you. It's for your own good, of course. At least to start with, though the psychological effects over time of what having this degree of control over a person are a little concerning. Ever seen anyone play the Sims? Everyone goes through a phase that would put them in jail for life were these real people.
You won't complain, of course; it's pretty easy to trace the origins of the thoughts of complaints and suppress those. Of course, what the subjective experience of that sort of suppression is is anybody's guess. Your problem, though, not mine.
Of all of the possibilities an uploaded human faces, the whole "I live a pleasant life exactly as I hoped and I'm never copied and never modified in a way I wouldn't approve of in advance indefinitely" is a scarily thin slice of the possible outcomes, and there's little reason other than exceedingly unfounded hope to think it's what will happen.
It's fiction, but it's a depiction of a society that's amoral of technology to the point of immorality. A world where any technology that might be slightly be useful becomes used up of every bit of profit that can extracted and then abandoned without a care of what it costs and costed the inventor or the invention.
Is that the world we live in? If nothing else, it seems a lot closer to the world of Lena than the one you present.
Sounds like you should write that story! I'd love to read that :D
What harm is there to the person so copied?
Guessing that was based off https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks a bit.
The author has said the title is a reference to the Lenna test image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna. Possibly another influence though.
I mean, the basic problem behind both is the same - taking without consent or compensation, and the entire field being OK with it. (And, in fact, happily leaning into it - even Playboy thought, hey, good for name recognition, we're not going to enforce our copyright)
Neither the test image nor the cell line are sentient, so they're nothing like MMAcedevo. Literally the one thing that's actually ethically significant about the latter does not exist in the former cases. Rights to information derived from someone is a boring first world problem of bickering about "lost revenue".
IIRC Lenna doesn’t want her picture used anymore because she was told it was making some young women in the field uncomfortable. I don’t think she’s complained about the revenue at all(?).
Reading mmacevedo was the only time that I actually felt dread related to AI. Excellent short story. Scarier in my opinion than the Roko's Basilisk theory that melted Yudkowsky's brain.
Is that correct? I thought the Roko's Basilisk post was just seen as really stupid. Agreed that "Lena" is a great, chilling story though.
It's not correct. IIRC, Eliezer was mad that someone who thought they'd discovered a memetic hazard would be foolish enough to share it, and then his response to this unintentionally invoked the Streisand Effect. He didn't think it was a serious hazard. (Something something precommit to not cooperating with acausal blackmail)
Thanks, that's essentially what I was thinking it was.
Just read this last night! as part of the 'Valuable Humans in Transit and Other Stories' collection.
If you enjoyed this story, I cannot recommend enough the video game SOMA, which explores the concept very effectively from a first person perspective (which makes it all the more impactful).
I also like this one: https://qntm.org/responsibility
I bought the short-story collection this is a part of and liked it a lot: https://qntm.org/vhitaos
A lot of the stories are free to read online without buying it but I thought the few dollars for the ebook was worth it
This could just as easily be a history short from the Bobiverse.
This story closely mirrors my (foggy) memory of “2012: The War for Souls” by Whitley Streiber.
Without giving too much away, I recalled a specific story about a human consciousness being enslaved in a particular way, and ChatGPT confirmed that it was included in the book. I don’t think it is hallucinating, as it denied that similar stories I derived from that memory where in the book.