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Tree Goat posted:skinner's experiments on pigeons discovered that if you use a random reward schedule on pigeons, they will perform "superstitious" actions (such as noticing that the reward pellet dropped when they were preening, and so start preening all the time) that become gradually more nonsensically elaborate (noticing that preening doesn't seem to work, so maybe it only works if they face in a certain direction, or hop on one foot, etc.). this is a good post
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Jan 16, 2019 20:13
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Tree Goat posted:the zone is an enormous skinner box with a random reward schedule that is generating human behavior that is increasingly irrational and unhinged. Humanity is doing this to itself.
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Jan 21, 2019 11:25
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Need suggestions for next month.
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Jan 21, 2019 14:55
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Need suggestions for next month. https://www.amazon.com/Trigger-Warning-William-W-Johnstone/dp/0786040505
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Jan 21, 2019 20:48
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Xander77 posted:If aliens were actually experimenting on humans, this would be a very different book. although i think there's a reading where the humans are being experimented on or there's otherwise intent behind the zones and it's exactly the same book (arguably a less interesting one, but still a supportable reading all the same). i'm reminded of "the screwfly solution" where the men confabulate meaning and dogma in their actions even after it becomes clear that the behavior modification is pathogenic and likely alien in origin. Hieronymous Alloy posted:Need suggestions for next month. if you were still looking for newly public domain stuff i'm always down for psmith or lord peter wimsey or something suitably fluffy in that vein.
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Jan 21, 2019 21:06
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Need suggestions for next month. I'm a few chapters in One Hundred Years of Solitude. It was BotM, like, thirteen years ago, and I couldn't even find the thread with archives. I know it's well-liked in TBB, so there's plenty of people to discuss it.
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Jan 21, 2019 21:45
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Tree Goat posted:my point was that it operates like a skinner box, not that there's necessarily agency in the zone's operation This was one of the things I really liked about the book, that either reading is (arguably) valid. As a terrible trashperson horror fan, I do find the idea that the zone itself is exerting some influence on the decision-making kind of neat, but yeah, it's less compelling of an idea than ascribing all the strange behavior associated with stalkers as nothing more than trial-and-error superstition based on whatever happened to work on a given day. It's interesting to draw that idea out and view the book as an example of a very human tendency to ascribe some meaning (even meaning we acknowledge we don't/can't understand) to what is entirely random chance.
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Jan 21, 2019 21:49
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Franchescanado posted:I'm a few chapters in One Hundred Years of Solitude. It was BotM, like, thirteen years ago, and I couldn't even find the thread with archives. I know it's well-liked in TBB, so there's plenty of people to discuss it. To kind of jump off this post, I know the policy has always been that BotMs shouldn't be repeated, but there's so many books way back in the early days of BotM that I'd love to read and actually see discussed. I feel like we wouldn't lose a ton of people who would otherwise be involved in the threads if we redid literally anything from, say, 2014 and earlier.
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Jan 21, 2019 21:51
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What about The Autumn of the Patriarch for García Márquez?
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Jan 21, 2019 23:45
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Looks interesting.
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Jan 22, 2019 17:24
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For Something Completely Different, my suggestions for next BotM:
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Jan 23, 2019 20:14
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hackbunny posted:The Crossing, long form article. Mostly as an excuse to finally read it, before it disappears from the internet forever bad news 
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Jan 23, 2019 23:46
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If we can get a good link I would loooove to read the longform article, that's a meduim I'm always neglecting.
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Jan 23, 2019 23:57
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it's called the book of the month not the long form internet post of the month.
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Jan 24, 2019 00:40
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The Effortpost Of the Month Club
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Jan 24, 2019 01:30
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Yeah that article loads for me but "book" in this context means published between covers with a spine, or electronically in an ebook format (.mobi, etc). A comic book trade paperback would theoretically count but would fit better in BSS. I think we had a thread for a while dedicated to web serials, not sure if it's active or not. what I look for in the BoTM: 1) accessibility -- this means either not impenetrably dense to read OR availability in ebook format; ideally both. The perfect candidate is an easy-to-read out of copyright ebook. Something like Three Men in a Boat is ideal here. Finnegan's Wake may be available as a free ebook but it doesn't meet this criteria because nobody can read it. BoTM is a gateway drug so I want people to walk through the gateway. 2) novelty -- something most people on the forum haven't already read. This is why prior BOTM's are generally not considered but we have repeated some and it's not a hard rule. It's also why I tend to avoid SF&F but again, not a hard rule if it's something off the beaten track (like this month's selection). 3) intellectual merit -- it has to have enough substance to justify discussion. Thanks for all the suggestions above, please keep 'em coming. I'll try to get a poll up with five or so options this weekend. Franchescanado posted:I'm a few chapters in One Hundred Years of Solitude. It was BotM, like, thirteen years ago, and I couldn't even find the thread with archives. I know it's well-liked in TBB, so there's plenty of people to discuss it. We actually repeated that one in 2014, thread here: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3630493 We've also repeated Borge's Fictions, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feyman, and a few others. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 04:50 on Jan 24, 2019 |
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Jan 24, 2019 04:44
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:We actually repeated that one in 2014, thread here: Awesome. Thank you for linking it for me.
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Jan 24, 2019 14:11
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My copy of the new translation finally came, and everyone's already talking about what to read next month, go figure. 
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Jan 27, 2019 01:36
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Stuporstar posted:My copy of the new translation finally came, and everyone's already talking about what to read next month, go figure. It's a pretty fast read if you can get a decent window of time. I think I finished it over a weekend.
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Jan 27, 2019 01:48
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Stuporstar posted:My copy of the new translation finally came, and everyone's already talking about what to read next month, go figure. Thread won't stop with the calendar! Post, comrade!
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Jan 27, 2019 01:50
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I found the ending really poignant. That after all of this concern over the Zone, over what it has done to him, after he's sacrificed another man to a crusher to get to the Golden Sphere, after all his dreams of specific wishes he doesn't even necessarily know will be true - that Red just believes in humanity, in the clarity of his soul, and he wishes for goodness and hope and freedom for everyone, no matter who they are. That despite all his troubles and despite his hard life, Red still believes in the goodness and value of mankind. It was touching.
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Jan 29, 2019 02:49
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Arivia posted:I found the ending really poignant. That after all of this concern over the Zone, over what it has done to him, after he's sacrificed another man to a crusher to get to the Golden Sphere, after all his dreams of specific wishes he doesn't even necessarily know will be true - that Red just believes in humanity, in the clarity of his soul, and he wishes for goodness and hope and freedom for everyone, no matter who they are. That despite all his troubles and despite his hard life, Red still believes in the goodness and value of mankind. It was touching. Yeah that section gave me goosebumps too, but remember part of that is Red's guilt about the kid he just murdered/sacrificed to get there. It's not his wish, he's largely repeating what the kid was saying would be his wish. Red is feeling very numb about the fact another good if ultimately naive man just got killed by the zone and machinations of those around him. It's a redemptive and noble action, but hardly a pure one.
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Jan 29, 2019 04:10
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Then there's the elephant in the room, the fact that, in the end, against his principles, he did sell the witches jelly, and it's even more dangerous than stalkers imagined - it converts almost everything it touches into more of itself, something that as long as it sat in a basement was nearly harmless, but in the hands of nosy scientists could end up causing the end of the world. I can't even justify him for only selling out when threatened with arrest, because he had already sold out the moment he took the empty porcelain container with him (much less filling it up, bringing it back and actually selling it)
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Jan 29, 2019 23:52
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Poll is up for next month!
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Jan 30, 2019 01:36
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Jumping to the end--a student gave me a copy of this and I just finished the first chapter. I don't want to spoil myself so I will come back and read when I'm finished but this is some mysterious moody writing. I am enjoying it very much. Very Russian
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Mar 23, 2019 20:23
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Coolness Averted posted:Yeah that section gave me goosebumps too, but remember part of that is Red's guilt about the kid he just murdered/sacrificed to get there. It's not his wish, he's largely repeating what the kid was saying would be his wish. Red is feeling very numb about the fact another good if ultimately naive man just got killed by the zone and machinations of those around him. It's a redemptive and noble action, but hardly a pure one. Yeah. Its why I really liked this book, the characters were all so damned real (if not convincingly Canadian) and Red throughout that chapter had a dialogue with himself over his recognition of being a "good man" and the cold emptiness that the key--a better man than his father--would be used. I didn't get a strong anti capitalist commentary from this work beyond black markets being a thing--they were during the Soviet era as well and it read more from that perspective to me TBH. I loved the mystery of the place, how nothing was explained, leaving the reader to struggle with the meaning of it all, just as the characters did. But the Skinner box reading is good, even if inadvertent rather than intentional. I think the end chapter had a bit about humans being more like machines in some ways did it not?
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Mar 25, 2019 04:59
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Bilirubin posted:Yeah. I always felt that the anti-capitalist interpretation was something that the Strugatskys had to sell to the censors. It never felt to me that the book was actually built around a critique of capitalism so much as humanity in general and it felt like the social backdrop to the book could just as easily have been in the USSR as the west. You can read it as anti-capitalist, but to me it feels like a reach and I read that the Strugatskys had to work with the censors to get the book cleared so I figure that the anti-capitalist reading was a motivated argument.
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Mar 27, 2019 16:49
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