Books and Reading

[SciFlyBoy]

Was Outlander also a scify movie where Sean Connery played a sheriff on one of Jupiter's moons?

[Alienmorph]

The one Outlander sci-fi movie I've seen had a (conveniently human-looking) alien and the moster he was hunting down crash-land on Earth in norther Europe during the last days of the Vikings. Fun concept, very meh execution.

[Ragabul]

The book is about a WWII nurse who ends up transported back to 18th century Scotch Highlands. These all three sound ripe for a ridiculous crossover given one already has Sean Connery. A WWII nurse and Scotch Highland warlord played by Sean Connery must track down a time-traveling planet skipping alien who has recruited a Viking crew to help in with nefarious plans or some such nonsense.

[Ragabul]

Ignore, posted in wrong thread.

[SciFlyBoy]

Reading the first chapter in 'Dune' I immediately tied it to a recent meme going around. And that brought up a question; obviously the book is the best way to experience the story, but they also made two movies. I never watched the Dune movie from the 80's.

So here's my question; how should I Dune? Are the movies any good? Is it worth it to watch the movies first to get the enjoyment out of them before the book puts them to shame?

[Ragabul]

I can't really provide a good answer to that question because it's been so long since I read/watched Dune and I haven't seen the new movie yet. My exposure was that I watched the 2000 sci-fi channel movie when I was, I dunno, 16? 17? I liked it well enough at the time but my tastes have shifted and I've become an irredeemable snob as I've gotten older so I don't honestly know if I'd still like it. Anyway, I liked it well enough that a few years later once I decided I should probably read sci-fi for the first time, it was the first thing that came to my mind and I read the original 6 books written by Frank Herbert Sr. I never read the zillion odd additional books written by his son. This order/framing did nothing to mess up the books for me.

I usually always recommend reading books first because books are better than movies IMO 90% of the time, but I'm also pretty biased. From what I've seen of reviews of the new movie and what I remember of the budget nature/bad CGI of the sci-fi channel Dune I'd also say you are probably better going after the new movie. You can always read book 1 & then watch the movie before deciding if the rest of the series is worth your time since the other five books aren't part of the story of the movie.

[Vol]

All that talk of Great Man and no one brought up those fake Great Men, like King Arthur and in this book's case Toranaga.

My edition was split between two books.

In my terribly beaten up copy, there's a marker for the second book, which struck me as bizarre. But given I'm expecting to possibly read Winds of Winter, and never A Dream of Spring, maybe time management is a virtue.

The story was GREAT! It was a wonderful dive into the life of the Japanese nobility at the end of the Sengoku period and the formation of the Edo period. Toranaga is quite an amazing character that should be studied when discussing political figures and why some people are great leaders. It's not that they say great inspirational speeches or are able to rally people to a cause, but they keep working the system to favor them and give them one more day. All the characters feel real and don't feel like they're there to move the plot forward. It was just great. I won't forget this story.

Next is Dune.

It's very romantic. The kind of adventure that will never exist again, but something men still dream of. A smarter take on a pulp fiction premise. Toranaga is brilliantly written, to the point that I have to think he's more drawn from history than invented. Though the subplot with pretending to be a defeated man was puerile at points, in the moment, I never noticed how silly it was. Do anything for more time, and opportunities will present themselves. Leverage Blackmoore, always ready to spend him, but always keeping him protected enough to survive. The insanity and utmost importance of honor and duty, the scheming of the Jesuits, the friendship with Ricardo.

Ah, I need to buy a new copy. There's a made for TV series too, I've heard it's quite good, though I've yet to watch it. "Gaijin," wasn't as good, there was a mean-spiritedness to it, almost. I'm slowly working on Tai-pan, which is more like Shogun, but less romantic, as the lead is not a dashing, clever "good" man.

[SciFlyBoy]

I actually finished watching the Shogun TV series today. Four discs, 2 discs per book. You can finish the whole story in 1 day's viewing. And the show was pretty faithful to the book, but the skim milk version. Toranaga is more brilliant in the book where we get to see him more fleshed out and more of his internal dialogue.



Dune so far is...eh. I'm not far into the book, maybe an 8th. His mom just arrived on Arrakis. We met what I suppose is the main character and the beginning of what I assume will be the main conflicting parties. The writing is not as polished as Shogun, it seems more fan fiction-y. The names the writer gives everyone and everything is quite hilarious. It seems like just random sounds he assigns for the purpose of making it seem alien. "Young man, as Proctor of the Bene Gesserit, I seek the Kwisatz Haderach..." and so on with names of things.

And obviously he wrote this story before we came up with standard names for things of sci-fi, so instead of force fields, shields or hover chairs he comes up with different ways to describe technology that existed before Star Trek or Star Wars popularized them. But I don't fault him for that. This was written in 1964.

I'll continue the read and see how the story goes.

[Ragabul]

I'm getting there, god damn it! I'm finally on the last book of Malazan Book of the Fallen (of the flagship series anyway. There's just as many side books and prequels and whatnot. But holy crap I would also like to read something else before I die).

I'm about 1/3 done with it and will save my full postmortem for when I finally finish it with the goal of finishing it by the end of December (full audiobook of book ten is 45 hours and 20 minutes long).

It will be the second longest series I ever completed after the Wheel of Time. And it is the best ginormous series I've ever read by a considerable margin.

I'm already fishing for what fantasy to read next. I've been mostly not reading fantasy for a year or so now to force myself to finish this.

The two fantasy books that have been on my to-read list the longest are The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett which is the first book in the Discworld series and the The Thousand Names by Django Wexler which is the first book in The Shadow Campaigns. That first one is a fantasy comedy series I've known about and wanted to read since forever but it appears that either an unabridged audiobook version doesn't exist or has disappeared off the face of the Earth for some abstruse copyright reason. I've seen metadata in various places suggesting this unicorn exists but I can't find the darn thing anywhere. The second one appears to be a fantasy epic set in a world with Napoleonic War level armies and technology.

@Dune

I remember it being *super* weird and seeming profound, but as I said I was about 19 when I read it so it's hard for me to say if it went over my head or if I was just young and fell for empty pretentious bullshit. I need to reread it at some point.

[SciFlyBoy]

My brother and Mom read the Sword of Shannara series by Terry Brooks. There are bookshelves and bookshelves full of just Shannara novels at my parent's home. I will never get into it simply because there's just too much of it for me to want to get into.

[Ragabul]

In the case of Shannara, I'd say you aren't missing much. The first book The Sword of Shannara is like C writer level derivative Tolkien mimicry distilled to the purest form of derivative mimicry possible. Then he writes maybe 8ish books in a row that are literally just repetitions of this with the sons and then grandsons and then great grandsons etc. of the characters in the first book. Then after that even he must get sick of it because he randomly jerryrigs that setting to really be a fantasy world set in a sci-fi dystopia in which the great-great-great-great (to the power of 50) grand children of the first book people must fight an evil AI they think is a demon. Somewhere around there I stopped. That was about 15 years ago and he's still been writing ever since so who even knows what he's doing now?

My taste in fantasy was utterly indiscriminate as a teen. I would read anything with a dragon on the cover or that had the word "sword" in the title.

[Ragabul]

Why We Are Not Pagans

Interesting essay about the long, slow transition from paganism to Christianity and weird transitions back into something resembling paganism again Unclear if this is better here or the politics thread since this topic has come up in both places. It's not particularly political in and of itself so I'm dumping here.

[Vol]

I wouldn't even call that a transition from paganism, so much as contextualizing those intrinsic feelings with better philosophy and teleology. Then the philosophical conclusions of Darwinism obliterates that ability to believe we're both part of nature and partly above it as stewards. But retaining and refining the idea of ordered reality, through naturalism, in a sense compels us to be "scientific pagans." We're back in the same position as the old ones, but without the mercy of river goddesses and ancestor ghosts. We're obliged to believe in a blind, infinite reality, that also has immutable laws and structure, without intentional design, and that we should value the biosphere.

I've read a tiny bit about Shinto recently, and a lot of the ritual, to me, was a pleading helplessness. Trying to forestall an inevitable wrath of the natural world. Which given the geography of Japan, was common. That's the headspace the modern, educated man has to occupy, but with more details and better models. We have to be blandly pagan or be nihilistic utilitarians.

To touch on the hate-group stuff:

► Show Spoiler

I've noticed a definite uptick in the people talking about returning to EVROPA and Odin but it's almost uniformly framed as being because the historical Jesus was a Second Temple Jew from the Levant. The context of that against their qualms with the extant Jews is impossible to explain as succinctly as the retort, "Kike on a stick." Which is a little tragic, picking a belief system nobody really believes out of spite, though I doubt anyone really does anything more with it than that and some silly rituals.

It's so petty and insincere, and never justified or detailed, but notably louder lately, that I think it has to be astroturfing. Though obviously some groups do invent an ethnic twist on what they cobble together of long dead civilizations, the greater trend is towards a less magical take on what we used to think, without any capacity to judge or reason.

But broadly speaking, I'd grade "us" by how literally or symbolically we believe in Fern Gully.

[Vol]

Finally started reading the second Mao biography I've had on my shelves for a few years. This one is written by his personal physician, after the civil war, so it's far more concerned with his character and behavior than China. "The Private Life of Chairman Mao."

What's fascinating is how utterly primitive he was, as peasant made emperor, while also extremely sophisticated when it came to people. He acts petulant and ignores all advice to swim in 3 dangerous rivers (One had human feces, the second had whirlpools and snails carrying a nasty bacteria, the third had thunderstorms at the time), then turns around and creates a web of patronage and paranoia among the entire inner circle of the Party without using any force (until purging). He believed if he could have sex with over a thousand woman, as an ancient emperor was said to, he could live forever, and also learned English in order to read philosophical works to debate with his doctor. A mixture of primitive superstition and magic, but an awareness and awe of western science. Also a complete sociopath.

[Ragabul]

I finally finished reading Malazan Book of the Fallen early on Christmas Eve. I had a big post mortem in my head but it's fairly hard to actually explain the books as they are so unlike most anything else I've ever read.

Even "what are these about?" is very hard to put a finger on. One of the more succinct descriptions I've seen was from some user on reddit who said something like "it is the story of the elite marines who fight the never-ending wars for the Malazan Empire" which is 100% true and also 100% lacking in capturing the complexity of what's going on.

This setting started as a homebrew roleplaying setting developed by two guys who later decided to mostly write books set in it. It is as rich and detailed as pretty much any giant fantasy setting you want to compare it against (Middle-Earth, Forgotten Realms, Star Wars, whatever), but one of the pair of creators is a trained archeologist with a tremendous grasp on how history actually works and how *much* history an inhabited world actually has. There isn't a patch of dirt to be stood on anywhere in this setting that doesn't have a history going back to the Stone Age (made even more complicated by there being innumerable other races besides men who went through their own stages of evolution). Every place has the cultural complexity of modern India with hundreds of tribes, languages, castes, religions, and so on, a history that goes back to Homo Erectus equivalents, a large, constantly conniving pantheon of Gods interacting with the world as much as the Greek Gods did in the Trojan War, and an ecosystem of planes and outer realms as complicated as those in D&D cosmology.

The books takes a slice of the history of this world traversing 3 continents mostly written centered on two elite armies of the Malazan Empire (the Bridgeburners and the Bonehunters). Each character certainly serves as a kind of eye in the storm and has an arc if not quite always a story per se. There is also a central conflict (involving the Crippled God of the title of the last book) that gets resolved. However, in many ways the books are a kind of arbitrary slice into the history of this world as if somebody set out to tell you the "story" of the USA, Europe, and China for the entire decade of the 1940s by following around some soldiers from each place. It's almost like saying WWII had a central plotline of "defeat Hitler" which is banally true but also utterly incapable of relaying what's happening.

You could very well bog down in all this detail if this guy took the Tolkien route and added the necessary 800 pages of appendices or turned half of each book into exposition. He doesn't do that. He just dumps you into the middle of Poland in 1943 and leaves you to figure it out for yourself (with maybe a paragraph long faux historical quote at the chapter beginning if you are lucky. Just as often you get 0 exposition and he starts with a faux ballad quote from the Shakespeare of Malazan, Fisher kel Tath, instead). There is an exceedingly minimalist appendix which is just sufficient for you to keep from getting characters mixed up. A typical entry will be something like: "Shadowthrone: Ammanas, King of High House Dark" but you are left to actually absorb what all that means from the text itself without exposition.

At first, I found this frustrating and stupid and thought it was mostly this guy trying to be avant-garde and deliberately inscrutable. But as the sheer complexity of what's going on slowly dawns on you, I changed my mind. (I think the mallet to head moment in particular is Book 5 which is the first book set in the 3rd and final continent. The reaction to this I had was something like "OMG, an entire *other* Middle-Earth worth of stuff! I just barely got a handle on the first two!" It ended up working out because the last continent contained most of my favorite characters). There is just no way he can do what he did with exposition without making the series half again as long or cutting out half of the content (which would be a big loss).

There is simply no way around it. You will spend most of Book 1 being confused. I kept going because I was forewarned by many Malazan enthusiasts to expect this. They also usually say give up after Book 3 if it's still not working for you. End of Book 2 or middle of Book 3 is usually cited as the place when some kind of flashlight goes off in people's heads and they start really digging it. I got the flashlight of understanding at some nebulous point between the end of Book 2 and maybe halfway into Book 4. That was sufficient for me to find what I was doing fun and interesting, but I didn't get the "oh man, this is stupidly great" until well into Book 5.

The series is not perfect. One thing he does which adds even more to the complexity which I *do* think is just him trying to be avant-garde and deliberately inscrutable is that he will spend whole sections of early books writing about things which are pointless until 3 or 4 books later and which he didn't need to address that early at all. One particularly bad instance of this is a long, detailed description of a very confusing thing discovered in a Warren (basically a D&D style plane of existence) in Book 4 which has 0 to do with Book 4 and not mentioned again with any depth until Book 10 in which it becomes central to the final conflict.

But I really honestly can't come up with anything of substance to complain about but that. It's a *very* good series. I love the Wheel of Time but this series just steals the Wheel's lunch money. It's also (don't kill me) significantly better than A Song of Ice and Fire. It's better just because it's a better story, as good or better characters, *way* better world-building, but also because this guy keeps ten thousand balls in the air for 10 books and doesn't seem to bat an eye (and he did it in about 10 years of writing). I'm not going to compare it to Lord of the Rings which borderline invented the genre, but it's a very strong contender for best epic fantasy since Lord of the Rings.

Other than making sure you understand you are signing up for a very dense, complex series, my other major warning is to remember the title. The Malazan Book of the Fallen. It's telling you right on the cover. If you can't stand the thought of being with a character for 6 or 7 books only for them to die (in many cases from something as trivial and real as a random stray arrow) then avoid like the plague. (One of the most popular characters in the series dies of a fever while laying siege to a city. And not even in a notable way. Somebody else just finds him dying in bed and he does so inside of two pages). It is not one of those nihilist books where literally everyone dies in the end and everything everyone tried to do was pointless, however. It's a rough ride but you don't feel like you ended up being strung along for ten books just so a black hole could swallow everything up either.

I will cease rambling now. If you like epic fantasy (of the more dragons, gods, monsters, battles, and magic the better variety) and are not intimidated by long complex series, this is not one that you should pass up.

*Edit* One more small addendum. Steven Erickson is the guy who wrote the flagship Malazan Book of the Fallen series. The other of the pair Ian Esslemont has written a bunch of complimentary side books. He is...a significantly less skilled author than Erickson to put it kindly. He's not bad per se, but he's aggressively adequate especially after reading Erickson. I read two books of his and stopped. I can't say I got *nothing* from these because they certainly tied up some plotlines that didn't get addressed in the main series and gave me a fair bit of lore I wouldn't have otherwise got. I'd say try Night of Knives and Return of the Crimson Guard if you get really into the setting. The first one is short (standard paper back length of 400ish pages) and not a big ask. The second is more on par with the book length of the other Malazan books. If you don't find the second one a mediocre slog like I did than carry on. However, definitely consult a read order list if you do this because Esslemont books contain spoilers for Erickson books.

[Ragabul]

Been reading this:



My sister has been reading half a library about stuff like this lately and recommending the few ones she thinks I'd have any interest in. This one is pretty much a history of the science of autism starting in the 1930s and 40s. It's only so so interesting to me because it focuses too much on biographies but one of the sections goes over Hugo Gernsback who was probably autistic and pretty much invented modern nerd culture and fandom. I had heard of him but didn't know anything about him. Fairly interesting.

[Vol]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScqSZk02vA4

I appreciate this woman for suffering on my behalf. Made for great background noise while doing other stuff. But it's a great insight into the genre with how naked the author put themselves into the writing. At the hour mark, still wasn't sure what the Mary Sue's moral system was supposed to be, loathing sluts & daddy doesn't normally sit together in the lunchroom.

[Ragabul]

Oh man, worst book ever discussion! This was fun library conversation back in the day.

There's this funny blog which mostly consists of librarians submitting hilarious things they have found on library shelves at some point and weeded. Some gems from the first page without even digging into past submissions:







The donuts are corrupting the youth!

Some stuff I have personally cataloged at some point or other and found so ridiculous I made a note of it:



Book description: "Our worst nightmares have come to pass: America has been taken over and is ruled by Muslims. The USA is now called the Islamic Republic of Enlightenment. Sharia is the law of the land. Americans have a choice--convert or die.
You Didn't Build That"



In the terrible YA category. Book description: "After the Contamination—an epidemic caused by the super-trendy diet drink ThinPro that turned ordinary citizens into violent, uncontrollable creatures—the government rounded up the "Connies" to protect the remaining population. Now, two years later, the rehabilitated are being allowed home, complete with shock collars that will either control, or kill, them.

Velvet Ellis has struggled to care for her ten-year-old sister since her parents were taken in the round up. When she finds her mother in one of the "Kennels," Velvet resolves to do whatever it takes to put her family back together. But the danger isn’t over. It’s beginning all over again…"



Just a standard manga about high school stuff except there's centaurs.



Book description: "A Double-Barreled Avenger Is Born
Dr. John Bishop thought he'd seen his share of death on the battlefields of America's great Civil War. Then his quiet life was shattered when a gang of outlaws invaded his home, killed his family, and tortured him within an inch of his life. John Bishop's soul may have died that day, but his mangled body lived on. A beautiful Cheyenne named White Fox nursed him back to health--and a gunsmith outfitted him with a special shotgun rig where his left arm used to be. A strap across one shoulder fires it, while the chip on the other fuels his quest for vengeance. Now the man called Shotgun rides deep into the Colorado winter to find and kill the men who murdered everything he once held dear. The hunt will lead him straight to the heart of a fiendish criminal conspiracy--and force him to confront the violent legacy of his own outlaw brother."

I could keep going, but you get the gist.

*Edit* I lied. I gave this one as a gag gift at a white elephant Christmas party one year:

[Alienmorph]

I have seen a few good videos showcasing horrible books. One that stuck to me was a book of recipes that used semen as one of the prime ingredients. The best thing where the users' review, my favorite one being "Great book... we leave it in the open whenever we have guests, to scare them off".

As for bad books, one of the worst I've read as of late (and by that I mean about an year ago or so) was one about dragons that was mostly bad jokes and pop culture references. Nothing too exotic, but it was still annoying as fuck.

[Ragabul]

Literature and History

Interesting looking, gigantic podcast series that supposedly critically analyzes Anglophone literature from earliest days.

[Ragabul]

Finished the Piketty book and had several potential door-stoppers I was considering next. I went with this one:



Only listened to about 30 minutes so far but it's interesting narrative history with a strong narrator. I have also seen this book recommended repeatedly as the best single volume history of China. All signs are promising.

[Vol]

Incidentally, gotten a bit more into the Shinto book. Interesting history of source documents, where the first known one was in the 600s (AD), which was later "updated," and then again, with the oldest extant version being a reliable forgery. And the point was to give a general creation account for Japan and justify their imperial line, as directly instated by the sun goddess along with the divine gifts that *should* still be housed in the 3 shrines within the Imperial land. Given that as far as we can tell, the first emperor was in the 600s (BC), that is a very long line, and amazing to have surviving records of any sort.

[Ragabul]

So considering China is like 4000 years old and this book condenses all of that into one volume, obviously, there are entire dynasties that lasted hundreds of years getting described inside of ten pages and such. He's frontloading all of the ancient stuff such that I'm about 25% done and he's already up to about 900 AD.

This is fine and all because one book can only do so much, but I want more so I go off searching for some books that will flesh this stuff out better and these apparently barely exist. You can find eleventy billion books about China in the last 100 years, a few odd million on the 19th century, and before that it may as well not exist.

I get a dearth of stuff for, say, inland sub-Saharan Africa or random Polynesian islands, but China? Come on. I can find books on contemporaneous Greek stuff that is so pedantic it's funny, but almost no books going over entire ancient dynasties? There's some really dry textbook type stuff but you are just shit out of luck if you want narrative history. It's especially weird because China is one of the most "write everything down in ludicrous detail" cultures ever. The only ones who might beat them are the Egyptians. It's not like there's no source material.

[Ragabul]

I'm putting the book on China on pause because the last book in the Expanse series I had on hold at the library just came available:



With this one done, I will officially not be in the middle of any series anymore and I'm kind of hesitant to start anything longer than a trilogy. I usually end up being glad I went through one when I finish, but they are just so demanding and there is so much I want to read.

[Alienmorph]

I've realized it's been a hot minute (juuust 6 months or so lol) since I've updated how it's going with the classic book series. Got through quite a few more. There's been a few bumps here and there in my reading pace but...

The Last Man - so... did you know Mary Shelley wrote a huge ass post-apocalyptic book? Yeah, me neither. And I do mean big... so far it's the beefiest in this collection, even longer than Dracula. It's quite well-written, probably more so than Frankenstein actually, but... it's really fucking depressing. It's literally the story of mankind being whiped out by a super-plague, seen through the eyes of the last man left alive. Maybe not a good read for right now but... not a bad book;

The Call of Chtulhu (and other tales) - second in the collection with a bunch of tales from HPL. It also contained Reanimator, Rats in the Walls and The Red Hook Horror. As usually, fun to read if you're into horror, but definately some of the most... questionable of his tails, when it comes to the man's rampant xenophobia. So... trigger warning.

The Gold-bug (and other tales) - a collection of Allan Poe's detective stories. Surprisingly how the man was already so close to the format people like Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie will later on made so popular. Maybe had he invested more time making this kind of stuff, he would have had more success in his life. Not super into crime investigation stuff, but still an enjoyable read;

An American Reporter in 2889 (and other tales) - bunch of short stories from Jules Verne, first book with stuff from him in this series. A few fun ones, but... kind of unremarkeable;

The Island of Doctor Moreau - I was pretty pumped to read this one, but I ended up mostly chuckling at it. For someone who prided himself of his scientific knowledge, HG Wells really had some bullshit ideas of how science worked. In the original book, turns out that Moreau turned beasts into humanoids... by vivisection. Like, he seems to think that vivisecting an animal can let you dissassemble and reassemble it like a car engine or something lol

The Golem - second time I've read this one. It was a mindfuck the first time, and it still was the second. But a very well written one, very moody and "gothic";

The First Men in the Moon - probably the HG Wells story I've enjoyed the most so far, about two people creating a sort of anti-G batysphere and traveling to the moon, which turns out to be hollow and hosting a civilization of ant-like aliens. The spacecraft is another example of b.s. science, but it is an old book so... ehh. Unlike the Martians in War of the Worlds the Moon people are depicted in a much more favorable light, althout the author can't stop bringing up how ugly their bug mugs are lol

[Vol]

Had an odd experience the other day. The early morning of February 16th, to be exact. Since it involved the Bible, a collection of books and other written works, it goes here. Feel the need to share, as I'm still puzzling on it, and framing it in words, publicly, helps focus my thoughts. Wall of text describing about 30 heavily buzzed seconds ahead.

► Show Spoiler

According to the sticky note I made shortly after, at around 1 AM, after three tumblers of gin & vermouth, I cleared the books off my desk and picked up my study Bible. I had not done so in several weeks, if not months, and have no memory then or now of what inspired me to. Then, I opened it, and wanted to try and get a random page. So I held the pages in my hands, very fragile paper, and let the cover fall to the sides, because my thinking was this would make it more random to not use the "feel" of the book to guide me in picking a page. During this, my eyes were closed, I said a silent prayer in my head, a request for a sign, "something meaningful." Then I opened it roughly 2/3s of the way, again, eyes closed. Being so late, and buzzed, was unfocused and my vision slid around without purchase until settling around the second paragraph from the top left.

It was a passage from Matthew, warning of false signs and prophets. The exact same passage I had read a debate about earlier, and one I distinctly recalled, as opposed to any other passages I might have read in passing while browsing message boards, which would not have been many that day. I felt a warm giddiness for a little while after that.

Since, of course, it is possible to have been entirely (literally) blind, spectacular chance, I considered my biases. I knew the passage was from the New Testament, but not where, or by who, or where it would be in the narratives. I did know the NT is much shorter than the OT, but I've never read it nor knew where it began in this Bible. So even if I was aiming for randomness, and made a drunken attempt at that, I could have been primed with a general idea of where that passage was, even if I wasn't thinking about it. This Bible is over 2,500 pages long, with very thin pages, and is about 2" thick, and I believe it has an extended appendix. I could not physically flip the pages around, be rough, to really mix it up, I was gentle, and I knew I was opening it up more towards the back half, because I would naturally let the weight down with my left hand while opening with my right. So in the pure coincidence sense, I had effectively, even if not consciously, made it significantly more likely I'd end up in the NT, by eliminating half the total pages by my handling. But to pick any specific page from the NT would be impossible even with intent and thinking it out. I don't know where it starts, or the order of anything, or where any passage would be. I still don't, in fact.

Then, where my eyes settled. Is it possible that while my conscious vision was blurry and slipping around, my subconscious picked up on familiar text to what I read earlier, so where I arbitrarily settled my sight was what I'd already seen? Maybe. I do read like that sometimes, speed-scanning texts. Though I was also trying to be random, and one paragraph from the natural start point is technically as random as any point, but not quite in the spirit of it. I believe I was more aiming around the bottom of the second page, and moved around a bit before finally focusing and reading it properly.

Finally, the content of the passage. It's about false signs, and I had asked for a true sign. I seek guidance, and it's about not seeking guidance from charlatans. I believe the greater context is also the lead up to the Second Coming. While I don't think the apocalypse is imminent, I do think major, catastrophic changes will occur in my lifetime. But that could be reading meaning into the fortune cookie, and putting aside the coincidence to something I read earlier, I might have done this with any passage I found with some relevance to my thinking, which could be many.

That was my rationalist, logical, scientific conclusion. A slight bias, alcohol, fresh memories, and an incredibly unlikely, but possible, event occurring.

As opposed to the intuitive conclusion was that my query was answered, that my freely chosen actions were guided to that specific outcome. Even in the physical sense, because I closed my eyes and prayed, that was part of the causal chain to opening that page and finding that passage. In that way, because of the prayer, that page was chosen. The relevance to an earlier debate, and the meaning of the passage to my own questions, makes it very difficult to disregard as wishful delusions.

Was nice to lay it all out like this. I don't have a conclusion, but it adds more weight to a groaning skeptical structure. As I said, an odd experience.

The Island of Doctor Moreau - I was pretty pumped to read this one, but I ended up mostly chuckling at it. For someone who prided himself of his scientific knowledge, HG Wells really had some bullshit ideas of how science worked. In the original book, turns out that Moreau turned beasts into humanoids... by vivisection. Like, he seems to think that vivisecting an animal can let you dissassemble and reassemble it like a car engine or something lol

I read this one relatively recently. As I understand, the context was vivisection was the popular scientific trend at the time, and obviously incredibly cruel, which was the point in the story. So it was in part a polemic against the monster's performing unnecessary surgery in living creatures.

[Ragabul]

@ classic novels in general

Been thinking about reading some 19th century Russian classic novels because a constant answer I see to understanding Russia is like "go read X giant 19th century book." Plus they are just supposed to be among best books ever written.

The Call of Chtulhu (and other tales) - second in the collection with a bunch of tales from HPL. It also contained Reanimator, Rats in the Walls and The Red Hook Horror. As usually, fun to read if you're into horror, but definately some of the most... questionable of his tails, when it comes to the man's rampant xenophobia. So... trigger warning.

I put 0 stock in not reading somebody because they suck as a person, but if you are going to undermine author's legitimacy for wrongthink, you can make a stronger case for him than most. He's not just a banal period typical bigot. The standard saw goes that horror writers will write about whatever scares them and that's what makes what they write have bite. If that's true it's pretty meaningful that the thing he spends a huge amount writing about is like miscegenation and cosmic horrors causing horrible race mutants and societal rot and whatnot.

The difference really stuck out to me after reading Conan stories since Howard was both his friend and contemporary and even wrote some Cthulhu mythos type stories. Howard was just period typical bigot and you could tell the difference.

The Gold-bug (and other tales) - a collection of Allan Poe's detective stories. Surprisingly how the man was already so close to the format people like Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie will later on made so popular. Maybe had he invested more time making this kind of stuff, he would have had more success in his life. Not super into crime investigation stuff, but still an enjoyable read;

I read the Gold-Bug as a kid and don't remember specifics but remember liking it. The only detective type story I read was The Purloined Letter and while I remember him being really good at the Sherlock Holmes deduction type thing, the story was otherwise pretty boring. Doyle and Christie both did suspense very well which is a huge component of a good mystery. Poe certainly knows suspense in his more gothic horror stuff but the Purloined Letter was oddly lacking it.

@ Shelley

Only book of hers I ever read was Frankenstein which I read as part of some class in high school I think. I don't remember having strong opinions about it. Probably one I needed to be older to really appreciate. Plus assigned reading is usually less fun that reading you choose anyway. The fact somebody else picked it for you always makes you resent it a little (or it does me anyway).

Had an odd experience the other day. The early morning of February 16th, to be exact. Since it involved the Bible, a collection of books and other written works, it goes here. Feel the need to share, as I'm still puzzling on it, and framing it in words, publicly, helps focus my thoughts. Wall of text describing about 30 heavily buzzed seconds ahead.

► Show Spoiler

According to the sticky note I made shortly after, at around 1 AM, after three tumblers of gin & vermouth, I cleared the books off my desk and picked up my study Bible. I had not done so in several weeks, if not months, and have no memory then or now of what inspired me to. Then, I opened it, and wanted to try and get a random page. So I held the pages in my hands, very fragile paper, and let the cover fall to the sides, because my thinking was this would make it more random to not use the "feel" of the book to guide me in picking a page. During this, my eyes were closed, I said a silent prayer in my head, a request for a sign, "something meaningful." Then I opened it roughly 2/3s of the way, again, eyes closed. Being so late, and buzzed, was unfocused and my vision slid around without purchase until settling around the second paragraph from the top left.

It was a passage from Matthew, warning of false signs and prophets. The exact same passage I had read a debate about earlier, and one I distinctly recalled, as opposed to any other passages I might have read in passing while browsing message boards, which would not have been many that day. I felt a warm giddiness for a little while after that.

Since, of course, it is possible to have been entirely (literally) blind, spectacular chance, I considered my biases. I knew the passage was from the New Testament, but not where, or by who, or where it would be in the narratives. I did know the NT is much shorter than the OT, but I've never read it nor knew where it began in this Bible. So even if I was aiming for randomness, and made a drunken attempt at that, I could have been primed with a general idea of where that passage was, even if I wasn't thinking about it. This Bible is over 2,500 pages long, with very thin pages, and is about 2" thick, and I believe it has an extended appendix. I could not physically flip the pages around, be rough, to really mix it up, I was gentle, and I knew I was opening it up more towards the back half, because I would naturally let the weight down with my left hand while opening with my right. So in the pure coincidence sense, I had effectively, even if not consciously, made it significantly more likely I'd end up in the NT, by eliminating half the total pages by my handling. But to pick any specific page from the NT would be impossible even with intent and thinking it out. I don't know where it starts, or the order of anything, or where any passage would be. I still don't, in fact.

Then, where my eyes settled. Is it possible that while my conscious vision was blurry and slipping around, my subconscious picked up on familiar text to what I read earlier, so where I arbitrarily settled my sight was what I'd already seen? Maybe. I do read like that sometimes, speed-scanning texts. Though I was also trying to be random, and one paragraph from the natural start point is technically as random as any point, but not quite in the spirit of it. I believe I was more aiming around the bottom of the second page, and moved around a bit before finally focusing and reading it properly.

Finally, the content of the passage. It's about false signs, and I had asked for a true sign. I seek guidance, and it's about not seeking guidance from charlatans. I believe the greater context is also the lead up to the Second Coming. While I don't think the apocalypse is imminent, I do think major, catastrophic changes will occur in my lifetime. But that could be reading meaning into the fortune cookie, and putting aside the coincidence to something I read earlier, I might have done this with any passage I found with some relevance to my thinking, which could be many.

That was my rationalist, logical, scientific conclusion. A slight bias, alcohol, fresh memories, and an incredibly unlikely, but possible, event occurring.

As opposed to the intuitive conclusion was that my query was answered, that my freely chosen actions were guided to that specific outcome. Even in the physical sense, because I closed my eyes and prayed, that was part of the causal chain to opening that page and finding that passage. In that way, because of the prayer, that page was chosen. The relevance to an earlier debate, and the meaning of the passage to my own questions, makes it very difficult to disregard as wishful delusions.

Was nice to lay it all out like this. I don't have a conclusion, but it adds more weight to a groaning skeptical structure. As I said, an odd experience.

Had a similar thing (sans drunkeness) as a teenager

► Show Spoiler

Mine is considerably cheesier. Was at this church camp. This place had a gift shop and I bought my dad this pretty nice ballpoint pen there. It had a camo pattern and had a mustard seed (which is really tiny) in some resin like a bug in amber on the top and that verse about having faith the size of a mustard seed being enough to move mountains written on it. I spent all day running around in the woods, playing games out in fields, riding horses, etc and at some point realized it had fallen out of my pocket. Needless to say, a camo pattern pen laying just about anywhere in fields & woods over 50 odd acres was long gone. And even if somebody found it, there were hundreds of people at this camp and nobody would know it was mine to give it back to me or they would find it later after I left the camp or whatever.

Yet somehow I was 100% certain I would get it back. I have no idea where this feeling of certainty came from. I just mysteriously had it. And sure enough, a few days later my mom (who was working as a camp chaperone) gives the pen back to me and said some other camper I didn't know had found it and somehow ended up delivering it to specifically my mom.

I could similarly write a big long rationalist spiel about precisely why this was a completely likely string of events, but it did not feel like that at the time.

I also have more recently had a less pleasant one with much less feeling of certainty that nevertheless won't go away. My dad has twice seen this absolute monster deer in an area we've been hunting together for about 8 years now. Once about 3 years ago and once this year. This would be the biggest buck he ever shot and the big bastard is savvy as fuck. Both times my dad could never get a shot on him and both times the deer was all he could talk about for days afterward while being visibly shaken. Being shaken is utterly bizarre for my dad. My dad is an old man and I have this weird gnawing feeling that the deer is somehow both him and his death. Not in a malignant way, but in some weird symbolic summation of his life type way. I feel like if he ever shoots this deer, he will die soon after, for 0 reasons I can discern.

My most common experiences like these come in the form of numinous experiences where I simply feel *presence* most commonly in big, old trees which is one reason I found that podcast by the two Orthodox priests talking about spirits assigned to all kinds of things so interesting. If I come upon an ancient tree it's very hard for me to not walk up and put my hands on it. I do also often have it for some masculine overseer entity that seems to map onto more or less Yahweh. I've never had anything like this for Jesus of Nazareth though.

I'm consistently hesitant to interpret things as *signs* both for rationalist reasons and for false prophet reasons such as you just laid out. Even those priests in that podcast who 100% believe in demons and possession and such said that if you ever encounter a thing you think is an angel, the thing to do is to cross yourself and tell it go away in the name of Christ. If it's an angel, it will be cool with that, and this will stave off demons masquerading as angels.

I could also be missing a lot by doing this and be like that rationalist philosopher guy in the Great Divorce who doesn't understand he's in purgatory because he's an apostate because he's reduced religious experience to something so mundane that it's functionally equivalent to being a materialist.

Obviously can't interpret this stuff for anybody but myself and I honestly can't even interpret it for myself half the time.

*Edit* Can't help myself. Got two more I stole from other people. These are family stories so they have as much stock as any family stories have.

My mother and her two younger sisters were adopted when she was around 8 years old. She had a bad time before this of being in an abusive foster home and an orphanage for awhile. My grandmother's only child, a son, was killed in a car wreck when he was a teen so they decided to adopt. At some point, my grandmother had a dream she would get 3 girls. The adoption agency sent her a letter with pictures of my mom and aunts. My grandad pulled two pictures out of the package but the 3rd was sort of lost in the bottom. My grandmother was insistent that one was missing and that this wasn't right. He fished around in the package and sure enough there was the 3rd.

Theo's dad said he would leave him some kind of sign when he died. The day he died and before anybody had called him to tell him, a cardinal came and perched on the windowsill and began incessantly chirping and making sufficient racket that it woke him up. Once he came to the window, the bird did not fly away. It stayed for a bit with him there before finally flying off. Nothing like this has happened before or since.

[Alienmorph]

I read this one relatively recently. As I understand, the context was vivisection was the popular scientific trend at the time, and obviously incredibly cruel, which was the point in the story. So it was in part a polemic against the monster's performing unnecessary surgery in living creatures.

Oh for sure. Especially considering how pointlessly cruel and aimless Moreau turns out to be. Like, even the shitty movie with Brando gave some semblance of meaning to what was going on in the island, the novel version of Mareau instead is basically just a bored man with a God complex. Not exactly a glowing recommendation to the kind of research that inspired the story.

I put 0 stock in not reading somebody because they suck as a person, but if you are going to undermine author's legitimacy for wrongthink, you can make a stronger case for him than most. He's not just a banal period typical bigot. The standard saw goes that horror writers will write about whatever scares them and that's what makes what they write have bite. If that's true it's pretty meaningful that the thing he spends a huge amount writing about is like miscegenation and cosmic horrors causing horrible race mutants and societal rot and whatnot.

Very true. I like to say that Lovecraft was a literal xenophobe. As in... not your average "man of his time" old fashioned bigot, but someone literally afraid of everything and everyone not from his neck of the woods. His writing really reflects it, for better and for worse.

[Vol]

Going back to read the determinism/quantum mechanics stuff that set me off on this year long dive into philosophy and theology, it's neat to retread ground with new eyes. Also gave me an idea for a hypothetical that could potentially be put into formal logic by smarter people than me.

"If the universe is deterministic, it is potentially, but not mechanically, possible to build a computer that knows and tracks the movement of all matter.
If that computer existed, it would perfectly predict every outcome of every event at every scale, ever.
You are sat in a room with a table, and there are two buttons on the table, one on the left, one on the right.
A researcher tells you that the computer calculated that you will press the left button once, in exactly 30 seconds, then leave.
This conversation was factored into the computer's calculations as well.
Are you going to press the left button in 30 seconds?"

So my point would be, if we could create a predictive model of human will, at the extremely low level of picking a button to press, that would imply determinism if the model was accurate. Let's say the model existed, and it was perfect, 100% accuracy when the person being tested is not told what the result would be. Being told the blind result would affect the test, and the model would need to calculate that in, but should still produce a 100% reliable outcome on the same principles that make it work to begin with. If the tester was determined to make a specific action, then they are still determined to make a specific action after being told of it, though it might be a different action.

If you were sat there, and the researcher told you what you will do, based on perfect predictive models, can you not do it?

To me, it seems obvious I could act freely. If I was told I _will_ press the left button in 30 seconds, I will immediately press the right. Unless the causal powers that model reflects physically prevents me from moving my hand, that the trajectory of atoms breaks the illusion of control and my arm does not rise. If the researcher is lying, and the model said I would immediately press the right when told I would press the left, that reinforces the model's accuracy, but begs the question of why the truth can't be told.

The kicker is that under determinism, your mind/will would only be the sum of the physical parts, a complex emergent illusion of agency. So your will and what your arm does are the exact same, they can only be out of sync with disorders (Phantom hand). If you are able to want to disprove the researcher, then you have free will, though it would be terrifying if then you still were unable to act on that, and if you are unable to not want to do what the researcher said you would, then determinism is true.

[Ragabul]

If we know *everything* including about you, we would be able to predict what somebody exactly like you would do when told this information. Thus you feel like you chose it, but we could predict what you would choose. In other words, the guying saying "you will push this button in 30 seconds" would be knowingly lying.

Suppose instead of a man telling you about the button, we let the computer do this instead. Or rather we set the computer to *randomly* tell or not tell you about the button. Now either the computer breaks because it's not actually capable of delivering a random scenario or if it can, it can no longer predict what you will do because it doesn't know what scenario it will present to you.

More interesting question this kind of raises though. Is agency about getting to chose what we want despite a completely ordered universe? Or is it just a word for the unpredictability in our actions because we have incomplete or wrong models of the universe. And on top of these models being wrong, everybody's model is wrong in unpredictable, unique ways.

Interesting to think about. We don't actually know if randomness (true 100% unpredictable with any God-like machine ever) randomness is a part of the universe and I don't see that we ever could for the same reason you can't prove if God exists with science or not. Determinism is based on the assumption of our pocket following observable laws. If this pocket was accidentally spat up by a seething cauldron of pure entropy there is no computer we could ever create that would ever be able to "calculate" the cauldron of entropy. It would implode or keep vainly running calculations forever.

It seems like randomness must be possible for agency to be possible.

Put another way. I have a model of how my day will go broadly speaking. I can tell you exactly what I will do today with pretty high accuracy. Does this mean I don't have free will because I know what I will do? I don't know what I will do if there's a fire in my building today and I have to risk my life to save somebody else. It's only in those moments of the unknown that I have the sensation I am choosing something.

[Vol]

Had a similar thing (sans drunkeness) as a teenager

► Show Spoiler

Mine is considerably cheesier. Was at this church camp. This place had a gift shop and I bought my dad this pretty nice ballpoint pen there. It had a camo pattern and had a mustard seed (which is really tiny) in some resin like a bug in amber on the top and that verse about having faith the size of a mustard seed being enough to move mountains written on it. I spent all day running around in the woods, playing games out in fields, riding horses, etc and at some point realized it had fallen out of my pocket. Needless to say, a camo pattern pen laying just about anywhere in fields & woods over 50 odd acres was long gone. And even if somebody found it, there were hundreds of people at this camp and nobody would know it was mine to give it back to me or they would find it later after I left the camp or whatever.

Yet somehow I was 100% certain I would get it back. I have no idea where this feeling of certainty came from. I just mysteriously had it. And sure enough, a few days later my mom (who was working as a camp chaperone) gives the pen back to me and said some other camper I didn't know had found it and somehow ended up delivering it to specifically my mom.

I could similarly write a big long rationalist spiel about precisely why this was a completely likely string of events, but it did not feel like that at the time.

I also have more recently had a less pleasant one with much less feeling of certainty that nevertheless won't go away. My dad has twice seen this absolute monster deer in an area we've been hunting together for about 8 years now. Once about 3 years ago and once this year. This would be the biggest buck he ever shot and the big bastard is savvy as fuck. Both times my dad could never get a shot on him and both times the deer was all he could talk about for days afterward while being visibly shaken. Being shaken is utterly bizarre for my dad. My dad is an old man and I have this weird gnawing feeling that the deer is somehow both him and his death. Not in a malignant way, but in some weird symbolic summation of his life type way. I feel like if he ever shoots this deer, he will die soon after, for 0 reasons I can discern.

My most common experiences like these come in the form of numinous experiences where I simply feel *presence* most commonly in big, old trees which is one reason I found that podcast by the two Orthodox priests talking about spirits assigned to all kinds of things so interesting. If I come upon an ancient tree it's very hard for me to not walk up and put my hands on it. I do also often have it for some masculine overseer entity that seems to map onto more or less Yahweh. I've never had anything like this for Jesus of Nazareth though.

I'm consistently hesitant to interpret things as *signs* both for rationalist reasons and for false prophet reasons such as you just laid out. Even those priests in that podcast who 100% believe in demons and possession and such said that if you ever encounter a thing you think is an angel, the thing to do is to cross yourself and tell it go away in the name of Christ. If it's an angel, it will be cool with that, and this will stave off demons masquerading as angels.

I could also be missing a lot by doing this and be like that rationalist philosopher guy in the Great Divorce who doesn't understand he's in purgatory because he's an apostate because he's reduced religious experience to something so mundane that it's functionally equivalent to being a materialist.

Obviously can't interpret this stuff for anybody but myself and I honestly can't even interpret it for myself half the time.

*Edit* Can't help myself. Got two more I stole from other people. These are family stories so they have as much stock as any family stories have.

My mother and her two younger sisters were adopted when she was around 8 years old. She had a bad time before this of being in an abusive foster home and an orphanage for awhile. My grandmother's only child, a son, was killed in a car wreck when he was a teen so they decided to adopt. At some point, my grandmother had a dream she would get 3 girls. The adoption agency sent her a letter with pictures of my mom and aunts. My grandad pulled two pictures out of the package but the 3rd was sort of lost in the bottom. My grandmother was insistent that one was missing and that this wasn't right. He fished around in the package and sure enough there was the 3rd.

Theo's dad said he would leave him some kind of sign when he died. The day he died and before anybody had called him to tell him, a cardinal came and perched on the windowsill and began incessantly chirping and making sufficient racket that it woke him up. Once he came to the window, the bird did not fly away. It stayed for a bit with him there before finally flying off. Nothing like this has happened before or since.

► Show Spoiler

Other than the Bible page, I had a similar, very banal, moment of premonition a little while ago. In effect, I predicted a 1/450 chance event happening right before it did, and was quite happy about it, because the outcome was something I had been working towards. Again, physically and even statistically not "too" unlikely, but it was a flash of assurance, not hope, that it would be the case, then validation. Distinct from normal brain farts, deja vu. Possible that my sense of cause and effect had the wires cross very briefly, especially given how relatively silly the event was, "I get a little taste of premonition over _this_?", but it also made me happy and was a satisfying payoff to the work I'd done towards getting there. Another notable one was 8 or so years ago, right after I'd moved in disgrace back to NJ, and while sitting in the truck on the way to work, was asked to give 6 numbers for a local lottery run by a veteran's bar. Numbers popped into my head, which I wrote down, notably distinct from how I'd normally given random numbers, and they ended up winning me a nice little bit of pocket change. And we all have moments like this, and know people who do.

The most dramatic, clear one I've heard was a guy claiming that while driving, he heard a commanding voice tell him to maneuver his car in some way, which he did, and avoided an otherwise unavoidable accident. Or variations on the old story of taking in a poor stranger for the night, and finding out he wasn't human after receiving due charity. All of these moments have a rational, statistically feasible likelihood, and the perfect explanation of brain misfires. I'm not too sold on that, but what does make me hesitate is the nature of these moments. Why must it be so subtle, so brief, or vague, or easy to dismiss and rationalize away?

Julian or Norwich can know "all shall be well," you can know your pen will be found, I can know not to dabble in false signs and prophets, a guy can know to veer left, monks can know when demons are assailing them, but we can't get that little extra certainty that people once had, for whatever reason they did. Albeit, I've read some excellent arguments that if we did live in a more metaphysically "active" world, it would encourage perverse behavior to unspeakably terrible heights. Bronze Age evils amplified exponentially. If signs, seers, astrology, voodoo, neo-pagan rituals, any of it was inconsistently effective, even rarely, civilization would collapse quickly.

On Jesus, speaking as a pseudo-outsider, my observation is that the Trinity, among many other things, also seems to work as a way to...provide archetypical paths of worship. Meaning, you have Pentecostals who are entirely about the Holy Spirit, emotion, signs and wonders, and that's their thing. You have God the Father, a different appeal, the stern but loving patriarch, the source of all hierarchy and creation, "Father Nature" in a sense. Then Jesus, the Son, the empathetic, suffering servant, the one who dies truly innocent and saves us from endless evils. And even that is hard to fully internalize, hence the saints and Theotokos, to provide even more relatable human channels to God.

From where I sit, it looks like everyone in the Abrahamic faiths (and outside too) is going to have an affinity for at least one aspect of God that way, a place to anchor themselves with. In my case, my logical, philosophical side is drawn to the Father, why things even are, the patterns of nature, the point of all this, and my more human side is drawn to Jesus, what he did, why, and what we're supposed to make of it. My emotions and I are on strained terms, so it is difficult to understand the appeal of the Holy Spirit, because I do not feel things strongly, and if I did, I would be very suspicious. Unless it was something like Pascal's night of fire, where I would have to decide if I was going insane or not.

The adoption photos, the cardinals, these sorts of things are what seems to be breaking down Jordan Peterson, incidentally. I saw a clip of him talking with Jonathan Pageau, and it was hard to parse his psycho-babble about Jung, but I think what he was saying, while in tears, was that at a certain point, coincidences and symbolism are too obvious to cover in a shroud of reason. I briefly read into near-death experiences last year, and among many points, there was a common claim among those who were clinically dead, but revived, that they would see deceased loved ones, of all ages, and in some cases even the grown form of a sibling who died as an infant (and to whom some claim they had never known existed until then). But the verifiable aspect of some of these stories was that on occasion, they would claim to see people who were still alive, and then later discover that they had in fact passed on before the revived person died, but it was not known until well after the revival and account of their story. And many variations on that.

As I said, the structure of learned materialism and skepticism creaks loudly. There's a meme that sums up exploring, in thought or action, beyond what naturalism limits itself to really well. If your soul is a bird, then religion is a cage, and spirituality is the open sky. And hawks are demons, heh.

[Vol]

Oh for sure. Especially considering how pointlessly cruel and aimless Moreau turns out to be. Like, even the shitty movie with Brando gave some semblance of meaning to what was going on in the island, the novel version of Mareau instead is basically just a bored man with a God complex. Not exactly a glowing recommendation to the kind of research that inspired the story.

(Now take the polemic and realize it applies to today)

Heh. Yeah, I was unimpressed with the book. Which was a shame, since I enjoyed the movie as a kid, as a dumb spectacle, because I didn't know any better. It makes its point early and often. Was the book the version where the hog-thing ends up wiping out the post-Moreau peaceful society? Or something like that?

If we know *everything* including about you, we would be able to predict what somebody exactly like you would do when told this information. Thus you feel like you chose it, but we could predict what you would choose. In other words, the guying saying "you will push this button in 30 seconds" would be knowingly lying.

Exactly, I would be contrarian. So if the determined button is X, I will always choose !X (not X). Which would mean the determined button is actually !X, and thus I choose X. Which means the determined button is X, so I choose !X. It's a paradox, ad infinitum. The computer model would infinitely hang. There is no possible way for the researcher to tell me the truth of the determined future.

Suppose instead of a man telling you about the button, we let the computer do this instead. Or rather we set the computer to *randomly* tell or not tell you about the button. Now either the computer breaks because it's not actually capable of delivering a random scenario or if it can, it can no longer predict what you will do because it doesn't know what scenario it will present to you.

And in the philosophical sense, the only times the model would be correct is when I'm lied to. Possessing knowledge of how reality should work, purely mechanical by physical law, makes my behavior a violation of absoluteness. Which sounds awfully familiar laying it out like this.

More interesting question this kind of raises though. Is agency about getting to chose what we want despite a completely ordered universe? Or is it just a word for the unpredictability in our actions because we have incomplete or wrong models of the universe. And on top of these models being wrong, everybody's model is wrong in unpredictable, unique ways.

To use my example again, even if I chose the button I was determined to, that does not prove a lack of agency. But being contrarian proves agency (if possible). So if the universe is ordered, which it certainly appears to be, then agency would be only apparent when we don't do what we should. A negation of order is the most clear example of agency. That's a pattern reflected in our thinking from top to bottom. The serial killer is most clearly acting of his will, compared to the soldier who has had his will subsumed into the order of a military. The unethical plastic surgeon is fully at fault for what he does to people, while the best surgeon possible is "merely" realigning the patient's body with natural function, nothing is of his will except to be part of that.

Interesting to think about. We don't actually know if randomness (true 100% unpredictable with any God-like machine ever) randomness is a part of the universe and I don't see that we ever could for the same reason you can't prove if God exists with science or not. Determinism is based on the assumption of our pocket following observable laws. If this pocket was accidentally spat up by a seething cauldron of pure entropy there is no computer we could ever create that would ever be able to "calculate" the cauldron of entropy. It would implode or keep vainly running calculations forever.

It seems like randomness must be possible for agency to be possible.

Right, computers factually cannot be random, they are determinist machines, and if you know how their algorithms work, you could predict their "random" output with perfect accuracy. In the physical sense, the machine that could track every single atom and interaction in existence would also break the laws of physics, so it can't exist, but in that we *can* make predictive models that seem to work, it is a valid hypothetical tool.

If we define "random" as "non-causal," then yes, it would have to be. Like in my example, I factually have the mindset of picking the opposite of what I'm told I will. There are only 2 possible outcomes, either there is no agency, and I am compelled to pick what it says despite myself, the illusion shatters, or, the outcome is contingent upon me, which makes my agency a pivot point for reality.

[Ragabul]

The one thing I'm not following is why the guy always lying somehow disqualifies the experiment.

[Vol]

It would mean that the knowledge in my mind has causal power superior to a predictive physical model. That with perfect knowledge of my constituent matter and how it interacts, there is still something missing in the model. Calculating in the change of brain state after being told the prediction, or a lie, would obviously be part of the prediction.

In the case the guy tells me the truth, the model logically breaks down, as I've said. But now that I think about it, even if he lies, the model still breaks down.

Because he would lie specifically because the model knew I was contrarian. So what purpose does lying serve? To align me with the answer. But then what is the answer to begin with? The initial prediction would factor in my negation, and that would run into the same infinite loop.

So, really, if I possess the ability to go into the experiment intending to do the opposite of what I'm told is predicted, then there could not be a predictive to begin with. Either I do not possess that ability, and all empirical evidence suggests I do, or it's impossible to perfectly predict human choice (Perfectly anyway, probabilistically is entirely possible). And that has ramifications downwind.

[Ragabul]

Exactly, I would be contrarian. So if the determined button is X, I will always choose !X (not X). Which would mean the determined button is actually !X, and thus I choose X. Which means the determined button is X, so I choose !X. It's a paradox, ad infinitum. The computer model would infinitely hang. There is no possible way for the researcher to tell me the truth of the determined future.

I feel like something is missing here, but I can't quite put my finger on it.

I *think* the issue is that this computer would have to consider itself to be part of the calculations. In other words, the computer itself has no control over which button it will tell you you are going to push. It will tell you that you will push X because all the events in the universe leading up to the moment render it unable to do anything but tell you that you will push X. If that is so, you will straightforwardly push !X. Thus the prediction of the computer is "I will tell him he will push X, but he will push !X"

And say the computer even determines that you will be told more, but even so your action would follow straightforwardly from whatever the computer did in fact tell you. Say it calculates that it will tell you "I determined that I would tell you you would push X, but that you would really push !X" If told that, what would you do? There is no clear way to be contrarian here. The contrarian ad infinitum thing only works if there's a clear way to be contrarian ad infinitum.

The computer is predicting what you will do based on whatever it actually says to you and what it actually says to you is outside the computer's control because it is also on destiny rails. So if the thing it can't help but say is "You will push X," then you will push !X. If the thing it can't help but say is "I determined that I would tell you you would push X, but that you would really push !X" then you will do whatever you would do in that situation. If the thing it can't help but tell you is "hubcaps and cheese!" then you will do whatever you would do in that situation.

In other words, what the guy/computer is telling you in the experiment is not itself a predictive statement, even though whatever you do next is determined by what was said. The guy is neither lying nor predicting. He is just saying what he can't help but say, and you are just responding however you would respond to whatever he does say.

Apologies if I'm still not following you.

*Edit*

One thing this model does seem to predict is that the computer is *incapable* of directly telling you what you will do because you will always do the opposite thus proving its prediction untrue. Thus it won't ever directly tell you what you will do. This is not a lie. It is the same category of thing as a square circle. The computer won't do it because it's not possible to do it and therefore not a thing that would happen in a deterministic universe.

The potential hole here is not that the computer can't predict what you will do. It's that it can't *tell* you what you will actually do. So, sure, yeah at least so far as you specifically are concerned, the computer cannot tell *you* what you will do. But it can still know what you will do and tell anybody else what you will do. I see no way to determine if it can't tell you because of your free will or because of the square circle thing.

*Edit*

I think it is a square circle thing. Namely, a 100% predictive computer that can tell anyone what they can do and a perfect contrarian cannot both exist in a purely deterministic universe.

@ religion stuff

► Show Spoiler

I think there is something to the breakdown of the Trinity you put forward. Under that model, I am also drawn to the Holy Spirit but not in the sense of charismata. But I totally get what C. S. Lewis calls Joy. The feeling of profound otherwordliness. Magic. The thing in the weirwood tree. The place just over the horizon. A far green country with a swift sunrise. I can only talk about it in quasi poetic terms. When/if I think of Christ as Aslan, I can actually get it but only if I think of him literally as Aslan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd6hVYkkq88

This is actually why I believe in God. I cannot logic him into existence in my mind. And all the holes that logic poked in what I used to believe never killed Joy. But I never felt it *absent* the weirwood tree or Aslan. It was never there for a *merely* beautiful thing. And it is also Terrible. It's also in hurricanes. It's not just a comfort and an escape. It is Good but Terrible. It is not a Tame Lion. You may "desire dragons with a profound desire" but they are *dragons.*

[Ragabul]

Kinda politics. Kinda books. Kinda neither. The above and the world situation made me think of this C. S. Lewis quote which is just a good one:

"This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds."

[Vol]

I *think* the issue is that this computer would have to consider itself to be part of the calculations. In other words, the computer itself has no control over which button it will tell you you are going to push. It will tell you that you will push X because all the events in the universe leading up to the moment render it unable to do anything but tell you that you will push X. If that is so, you will straightforwardly push !X. Thus the prediction of the computer is "I will tell him he will push X, but he will push !X"

Wouldn't that be a critique against science in general, and the study of humans in particular? Using a human brain to study human brains is self-referential, measuring a ruler with itself. Since we're not solipsists, we have to presuppose that it is possible, and that would logically extend down to things we make, like logic machines. Which raises two more questions.

1) Philosophically, under determinism we are locked into "fate." The premise is that for pure physical reasons, the actual structure of reality is reflected in our brains, to the extent we can accurately describe the universe and are compelled to do things that accurately reflect the nature of reality within our limited means (Fractal). Meaning, even if everything is determined, scientific models are objective estimates of how reality is, and we had no choice but to make them. For example, every human is determined to know or not know how the water cycle works, but those who do know, are factually correct.

So in the causal chain from scientists that are fated to have true facts in their brains, to the perfectly predictive computer model, where does our fractal behavior of recreating reality break down? Or in other words, if science is possible, where does it become impossible?

2) The model would be bottom-up causation. It would be tracking all possible influential variables in the situation, matter at it's smallest significant level. Then taking the physical laws, refined to their perfect predictive value, to simulate all interactions. The model would not analysis my brain and know I'm a contrarian, or consider any factors that we could think of, as if doing psychology. It would be tracking the inevitable path of atoms, which should aggregate to my contrarianism. If that's not possible, then most of science goes out the window. But it clearly seems to work, because we're having a conversation halfway across a continent on metal boxes using harnessed lightning. The model does not see people and objects and itself, it takes in a list of matter and applies physical law to calculate the outcome, in the same way we reduce complex situations to mathematics.

So if one physical state must lead into a predictable next state, and humans are compelled to know this and scry the bones with a very high accuracy, why should that fail to be the case at any point?

The computer is predicting what you will do based on whatever it actually says to you and what it actually says to you is outside the computer's control because it is also on destiny rails. So if the thing it can't help but say is "You will push X," then you will push !X. If the thing it can't help but say is "I determined that I would tell you you would push X, but that you would really push !X" then you will do whatever you would do in that situation. If the thing it can't help but tell you is "hubcaps and cheese!" then you will do whatever you would do in that situation.

Hm. But shouldn't there be one and only one possible future? In the same way that if I throw a ball, a sufficiently advanced model should predict how fast and far it will go, and exactly where it will land, down to the Planck length. Laplace's demon is impossible, material omniscience, but that only entails it being impossible to possess knowledge of the future, not that it isn't on causal rails. And if the hypothetical demon/perfectly predictive computer is logically impossible as well, then what exactly do we have with our predictive models and what we've philosophized about them?

The potential hole here is not that the computer can't predict what you will do. It's that it can't *tell* you what you will actually do. So, sure, yeah at least so far as you specifically are concerned, the computer cannot tell *you* what you will do. But it can still know what you will do and tell anybody else what you will do. I see no way to determine if it can't tell you because of your free will or because of the square circle thing.

So if the computer is considering all the matter in the test, and applying physical law to model what will happen, and we're operating on our scale of reality, "emergent behavior," where is the disconnect between the predictable movement of atoms and the atoms that compose my brain-state making the movement of atoms unknowable?

It would be like predicting the flight of the thrown ball, classical physics, but if you tried to factor in the ball into the equation, the model cannot give you an answer. Which is absurd.

I think it is a square circle thing. Namely, a 100% predictive computer that can tell anyone what they can do and a perfect contrarian cannot both exist in a purely deterministic universe.

I think you have the right of it. In a determined universe, it could never be the case that such a situation would exist, even though it seems an entirely possible situation. If it did, it would manifest as me being told I will choose the left button, fully intending to choose the right, but my arm moving of its own accord to press the left. It's like the materialist version of God creating a rock so heavy he couldn't lift it, the premise itself is gibberish.

@ religion stuff

► Show Spoiler

I think there is something to the breakdown of the Trinity you put forward. Under that model, I am also drawn to the Holy Spirit but not in the sense of charismata. But I totally get what C. S. Lewis calls Joy. The feeling of profound otherwordliness. Magic. The thing in the weirwood tree. The place just over the horizon. A far green country with a swift sunrise. I can only talk about it in quasi poetic terms. When/if I think of Christ as Aslan, I can actually get it but only if I think of him literally as Aslan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd6hVYkkq88

This is actually why I believe in God. I cannot logic him into existence in my mind. And all the holes that logic poked in what I used to believe never killed Joy. But I never felt it *absent* the weirwood tree or Aslan. It was never there for a *merely* beautiful thing. And it is also Terrible. It's also in hurricanes. It's not just a comfort and an escape. It is Good but Terrible. It is not a Tame Lion. You may "desire dragons with a profound desire" but they are *dragons.*

► Show Spoiler

I know what you mean, I think. In my least logical, tethered moments, I do feel "something." In my mind I have the mental image of a massive, glowing orb, and I can feel it radiate a kind of joyful warmth, just barely brushing over me, but I can never grasp it, it would be just out of reach, and even if I did, it would deform around my hands and slip out. It doesn't seem to be just my mind's way of creating a simple visual metaphor for "being happy all the time."

[Ragabul]

Using a human brain to study human brains is self-referential, measuring a ruler with itself.

If the only thing you are doing is predicting that rulers are 12 inches long and using one ruler to measure other rulers, yeah, sure. But that's not actually how we would study rulers scientifically. When you lay a bunch of rulers down and look at them, you can tell they are all the same length because *you* are looking at them and making that deduction. Likewise if I take them and throw them in water and see wooden ones float and metal ones sink. And so on.

Human brains are not all the same and unlike rulers are capable of analysis. Because they take in different stimuli (experiences) and have different innate preconditions, the analysis changes from brain to brain albeit within a fairly predictable range. When I analyze a thing, I will not produce the same analysis as you. Whereas every 12 inch ruler is interchangeable (at least for measuring things in inches).

Put another way, is it still self referential to measure a 12 inch ruler with a yardstick? What about comparing the side in inches with the side in centimeters?

This certainly predicts a limitation (probably quite severe) to human analysis, but it doesn't mean human brains are closed systems that are all perfect replicas of each other either like the ruler to ruler scenario.

Or in other words, if science is possible, where does it become impossible?

Mundanely at the limits of human cognition and/or the limits of our measuring tools. For example, if it's true that absolutely nothing can ever be faster than light and light is the only way we can make observations about insanely distant objects, we will just never know what lies beyond the edge of the observable universe.

So if one physical state must lead into a predictable next state, and humans are compelled to know this and scry the bones with a very high accuracy, why should that fail to be the case at any point?

It wouldn't in an actually deterministic universe. Isn't this kind of a tautology? By definition, if the universe is deterministic, we will never be able to prove anything except that it is. We may fail to prove it through lack of good enough models or measuring tools or such, but we will never be able to disprove it.

But shouldn't there be one and only one possible future?

Yes. I'm not saying all of those scenarios are possible. I'm saying that *whatever* the inevitable thing the computer does is, the subject will respond predictably from that.

So if the computer is considering all the matter in the test, and applying physical law to model what will happen, and we're operating on our scale of reality, "emergent behavior," where is the disconnect between the predictable movement of atoms and the atoms that compose my brain-state making the movement of atoms unknowable?

Maybe I'm not completely following you here, but if I am understanding you, I'd say in a deterministic universe, the "disconnect" is an artifact of human perception and not really a true disconnect. There *is* a causal connection but we just don't see because our models are wrong, our tools aren't sensitive enough, we are too stupid to understand that level of math, etc.

Putting all this another way. A deterministic universe is rather like an all powerful but mysterious God. You cannot prove either exists with anything short of the Theory of Everything. *Any* uncertainty, even the most minor, leaves room for other models to be true.

[Ragabul]

The Expanse is an example of a series that is woke in the diversity sense (LGBT characters, non-white characters, etc) which I have 0 issues with while not being woke in the philosophical sense (which is dumb and tedious). It's kinda started to be more towards the end. Most overtly in this last book. I'm about 60% done with it and it is annoying to say the least. Starts with super interesting questions about cultural clashes and first contact and so on and is currently pointing towards something like "fascism bad" with a more or less Twitter version of what fascism even is. Made especially stupid by jerry-rigging Amos who is notably amoral into a commentator on it. (Done so because Amos is the resident badass of the series so the subtext is "if you disagree with this I'll just break your neck").

[Vol]

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2384797?origin=crossref

If there was ever a time I wished I had access to academic paper repositories. Though to note, Japan is fairly unique in that they traditionally do not have a Deluge story, but it could be, according to the guy the paper is aiming to refute, they dropped it over time as the story of Izanagi/Izanami changed.

Fun fact: Haniyasu, the god of clay, is said to have come into being when (and from) Izanami soiled herself while dying from giving birth to the god of fire.

[Ragabul]

Eh, tried my ludicrous number of library cards I hoard and one library (Houston Public) did have JSTOR but my card is expired. I never use it because fuck driving into the city. I bought a copy of the Kojiki a while back but have yet to read it. What translation did you pick?

[SciFlyBoy]

I finished Grant's Memoirs.



Wonderfully amazing book. I'm DEFINITELY reading it again. And with a map!

Mark Twain said that it's one of the greatest works of American literature and I can see why. Grant knows how weave a narrative. There are no flowery metaphors, no run on sentences, no big speeches and he doesn't bask in the light of his own greatness. He tells a tale of how one simple man went from being a zero to being a hero in a way that I never understood the Civil War to be. Reading from the man who commanded all the Union forces at the end of the war about what real hardships he had to overcome to defeat Lee, defeat the image the north and south painted of him during and after the war, the political maneuvering he had to do waging war in an election year, his mistakes and victories, all the brave heroic men around him who made it all possible and above all, the thoughts and opinions of someone who was actually there, in the mindset of someone who was alive during this time and how me the 21st century reader can see the differences in how someone 150 years ago viewed the politics of their time.

Best book I read all year, I couldn't put it down.

My own personal thoughts...

There were a lot of generals in the Civil War, but really, only Grant had the vision and balls to see an end to the war that reunited the county. He had an uphill battle the whole way, because all the south needed was to annoy the north until elections, and hope people were tired of war and give into a peace solution. But Grant alone sparked the hope the North needed and Grant kept the cause of reuniting the country alive. Lincoln gave Grant the nails to hammer into the coffin of slavery, and boy did Grant hammer. I personally believe that without this one man there wouldn't be one country today. And he was truly magnanimous to the south after the war and as during president, which wasn't popular at the time. I think twice this man personally saved the Union, once as a General and once again as a President.

[Ragabul]

I did that spate of reading "primary sources" if you will from history last year and enjoyed it. I should do more of that. Some I've thought about doing that would probably be really interesting are some of those first hand accounts written by various people who accompanied the conquistadors and first explorers in the Americas. One I've thought about doing was this one:



This guy was the first European (we know of) to set foot in what would become the Continental USA. He shipwrecked on Galveston Island and then walked from there on foot to Mexico City spending several years with various Indian tribes in Texas and North Mexico along the way.

@ Expanse

It's starting to redeem itself. It was looking like the ultimate bad guy was going to be a tinpot dictator dude but that was a false flag.

[Ragabul]

Finished The Expanse. It did indeed pull its head out of its butt by the end. This series is consistently enjoyable but it does tend to meander in the last 3 books or so. It's very tight thematically and stylistically in the early books by mostly being about conflicts between humans within the Sol system but then

► Show Spoiler

people accidentally discover the means for interstellar travel by stumbling upon a mass relay like system of preexisting ring gates to 1300 or so systems with habitable planets. At this point, the series shifts into being about how the various Sol civilizations fight over the prospects of having 1300 colony worlds and dealing with what early extra-solar colonization might look like. This "early days of real space exploration" stuff is my favorite type of sci-fi. I find the ubiquitous "giant galactic empire with ships that fly with space magic invented 10000 years ago" that dominates most space opera to be utterly dumb and dull. It's usually just discount fantasy in space. Regardless, this new phase is a logical extension of the original 3 or so books and builds on them in interesting ways.

But then in the last 3 books, the series skips forward multiple decades so that...it can create a giant pan stellar empire that uses space magic invented by some civilization from 10000 years ago...*sigh* Nonetheless, it manages to stay relatively tight and not dissolve into Star Wars clone or whatever, but the "empire" phase never had the earnestness or cohesion of the rest of the series. Aside from being much less unique and interesting sci-fi, it also just never really seemed to know what to do with itself narratively or thematically at this point. Is this series now about the Resistance fighting this empire? Is it now about finding and defeating the enemies that killed the civilization that made the ring gates? Is it just about these various systems evolving in unique ways? Maybe all? It never manages to figure this out. Without utterly spoiling the ending, it does come back around to series basics though in the end in a mostly satisfying way.

Aside from the well done near future space colonization thing (I would totally emigrate to Mars in this universe, the Earth and the Belt can go fuck themselves), the series also does characters well. There's multiple A-listers for me and no particular favorite: Alex, Amos, Avasarala, Bobby, Miller, some others. I unfortunately want to put series centerpiece Jim fucking Holden out an airlock most of the time for his consistent insufferable naivete and low-key judgment throughout the book that anybody who disagrees with his moral positions is some kind of horrible monster.

Overall good series. Some eye-rolling takes on ethics. It gets weaker towards the end but never runs off the rails. Anybody who likes The Martian by Andy Weir would probably like it. It does also have pretty strong Mass Effect vibes sans aliens.

I'm going to watch the last season of the TV show when I'm done with Cyberpunk. I'm pretty interested to see what they do because there is no way they pull off that whole last book phase in one season so they will have to do something very different I expect.

[Alienmorph]

Well...

► Show Spoiler

The show takes several liberties with the source material, including merging a few characters, killing Alex, because the actor playing him got MeToo'ed (dunno if it was valid or not, just saying it happened) and it ends right before the timeskip, but still sets up the events for the last trilogy of novels, because there's a chance the series might be revived, as it was a huge success viewership-wise.

Having only read part of the books and watched all the of series, I definately enjoyed it all so far. But I will agree that when FTL travel became a thing a lot of the uniqueness of the story and setting were chipped away pretty badly. And I especially felt bad for Mars, when they go dimished into just a big pitstop between Earth and the outer system.

Didn't really dislike Holden tho. He's very naive, but the way he's always trying to do the right thing without turning in this or that faction's useful idiot was still interesting. Better than just turning him into another Commander Shepard-ish type, which I was worried might be what they were going for.

[Mazder]

I've not read the books but seen the series.
I have one question, okay kinda two with how I am writing it.

Naomi Nagata, is she in the books?
Is she, in the period set where the third seaosn is set, also basiclaly sit herself off to the sidelines and let herself be walked all over like in the show until

► Show Spoiler

that last moment on the rigged ship and no air tank?

[Ragabul]

I've not read the books but seen the series.
I have one question, okay kinda two with how I am writing it.

Naomi Nagata, is she in the books?
Is she, in the period set where the third seaosn is set, also basiclaly sit herself off to the sidelines and let herself be walked all over like in the show until

► Show Spoiler

that last moment on the rigged ship and no air tank?

Bearing in mind its been nearly 2 years ago I read the first 7 books and watched the first 3 seasons so my memory of specifics is kind of foggy:

1) Yes, she is in the books. The core crew of the Rocinante (Alex, Amos, Jim, and Naomi) are the same in the books.

► Show Spoiler

I don't remember too many specifics (including exactly what you mean by her being walked over) but she is considerably less dumb in the books. She does not give the protomolecule to Fred Johnson and in fact gets mad at Holden for being too cozy with Fred Johnson for a bit in book 2. Also, she does not serve on the Behemoth at all. There is a character called Bull who is a former Earther turned OPA member who is a major character in book 3 (last half of season 3). Rather than being a likeable antihero guy, in the book Ashford is just an asshole and the main antagonist of book 3. Bull and some other OPA people (along with Rocinante crew and semi reformed Clarissa Mao) take him down and prevent him accidentally getting Sol system destroyed, but Bull is killed in the process. In the show, the character of Bull is completely missing if memory serves and they sort of combine him with Ashford and turn Ashford into an antihero rather than just a bad guy.

Naomi in general is less gung-ho Belt in the books. She is pro-Belt for sure, but is consistently less about trying to give the Belt a leg up or whatever.

*Edit* Other major changes are that Mars is considerably less villainous in the books. They do not pillory Bobby and it's mostly Earth elements responsible for the protomolecule monsters on Io. The really bad elements on Mars appear after the ring gates are open and Mars starts to die. Since I haven't seen the last season yet, I don't know how far they get into that in the show.

The Expanse TV show makes major changes from the books, more than most adaptations do, but it's one of the rare cases where the *spirit* remains so intact that I don't mind the massive divergence. This is pretty rare. Only other things I can think of that massively changes everything but still nails the feel are the Guillermo del Toro Hellboy movies. Completely different from comics but 100% gets what makes the comics work.

[Mazder]

Ah, so kind of the same in terms of main character points as she is in the show, but has significant changes in the main dumb points she has.

► Show Spoiler

Where I feel she just gets walked over in the show is where she meets her ex and son and basically just goes all in in trying to save the boy when it's VERY CLEAR he's drank the Kool Aid and is all in on his father's way of life. I get a mother's instincts and all that but form the kinda level headed but brash character that could engineer her way out of a jam for her to go to "woe is me and I am trapped" for most of the season to finally get a semblance of that back when she went to the rigged ship and managed to get a distress call out.

As far as Mars goes they seem very much like what the Libertarian's claim to be, in the show at least. They are actually making the frontier lifestyle of Mars work for them and only go moustache twirly later on after they fuck over Bobby and Alex dies. Until then it feels they're all very "CIA cover-up" levels of evil. Not evil for the sake of it but evil so they don't get caught and start a massive war in the system.

Ashford in the show is one of my favourite characters. He is a great antihero in the show and I feel that in the books he's more like the character of Marco Inaros from season 6. Very evil belter who is very much on the Belter Supremacy train of thought.

As far as the Protomolecule goes I find it very...odd.
First it's a fungal-like virus, then it's basically like husks from Mass Effect, then it's space goop that makes a space station, then it's a ring-gate that also links to a station in a different space-time field, then it's dead on other planets and part of a war between 2 alien raced that are still around but in another dimension?
I did prefer it when it was more like the horror/fungal infection side of things that slowly made the station thing that made itself into the ring gate. But past that it feels very much mcguffin and not really driving anything until Holden seems to be interacting with it due to proximity kind of like indoctrination, but the Behemoth/Medina station's crew don't get anything after basically living in the ring space for bloody ages.

[Ragabul]

► Show Spoiler

Oh she does totally try to save her son in the books as well. So in that sense, yeah, she won't accept that he is a lost cause for a while.

As to protomolecule, they get into biology of the aliens that built the ring gates (kinda) in the last book. It's very vague but they are some sort of maybe jellyfish type creatures that evolved in deep sea vents and can link together like a hivemind. They also get into how they either could trade traits with each other or else had some kind of other symbiotic type species that traded between them (rather how bacteria can trade plasmids with each other). So the protomolecule was designed around that. So it 1) is able to communicate across distances as they could with their hivemind thing (quantum entanglement maybe?) and 2) it aggressively rearranges biological material presumably because the hivemind aliens could do this rather like bacteria with plasmids. And that is the commonality with all of their tech. They break down biological material and use it for other things. The insectile robots in the slow zone station literally break down dead bodies and use them to repair walls and stuff. There's also some people who die in later books and are put back together by some alien drones with protomolecule and come back but weird and creepy. It's totally space magic stuff but there is at least a consistency. Since the aliens are never really the point, I was fairly willing to forgive the space wizards part here.

From the best I can discern, the protomolecule doesn't *always* build ring gates. It receives instructions and will do what it's tasked with doing. So the stuff sent to Sol was tasked with building a ring gate, but once that's done, there's no particular reason or mandate for it to infect a mass of people and build another. It's rather like nanites I think made from some kind of organic base components.

As for the extra-dimensional aliens, basically the jellyfish are able to create the gates (which break the laws of physics in our universe) by punching holes into that other universe and using the ludicrous amount of energy given off by this to create singularities and stabilize them. This apparently does something to the other universe that the extra-dimensional aliens really hate because their whole shtick is they want to destroy the ring gates and slow zone to stop the siphoning off of this power. Again major spoilers from last book to go into much more detail than that.

[Vol]

https://timeline.com/in-the-1870s-12-tr ... 7c51a15d90

Interesting little story. I knew of locust problems in America, but none specific. At a peak, estimated 12 trillion bugs in a swarm overhead, and within a few years, extinct. Amazing. Theories are that farmers must have inadvertently tilled every bit of land where they laid their eggs, which of a population that high, is rather lucky. Or a more abstract ecological collapse (from our actions).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assumption_Chapel

And an extra story of some people with some blindly amazing timing/possible giant liars.

Edit: To be more pertinent, Prey was one of my favorite Crichton stories, despite being one of the dumbest. His leifmotif was, "Grug am create fire!"->"No, Grug, you am play gods!"->"Ah, fire burn Grug! But Grug learn from this, not destroy fire!" Prey took that to such a silly extent that all I remember of it is how carny the nanobot swarm became. The other books all get fun with the speculative future tech stuff, to make his point, but this one, that's really all I remember, that and a failing marriage because the wife was a bad mom or something. But the concept was so neat, as an evolution of the threat in the Andromeda Strain, that I've read it more times than Sphere, a much better book.