|
Jazerus posted:now, what it means that yud thought the best possible avatar of his philosophy was literal baby wizard hitler is left as an exercise to the reader It's teasing the main character as dangerous and instable for the sake of looking more exciting. See also the gratuitous allusions to him having a dark side and how he could conquer the world effortlessly if he wasn't so gosh darn moral.
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2019 06:40
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 3, 2024 10:14 |
|
|
Ok, the story is over. Let's give this another try. Try to give a quick readthrough of the recaps, and see all the ideas that went nowhere, or were terribly mishandled, or go completely against the ostensible intention of the story. Let's start with the Verres-Evans's. I don't think Yud ever realized that Yudiezer Sr is actually a worse person than uncle Vernon, who at the very least (as far as we know) actually loves his wife and biological child and is not outright abusive towards either.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2019 07:13
|
|
|
Ward is an amazing, beautiful trainwreck. There are seeds of good ideas sprinkled around, but it's the first thing that dude has ever written where I spent the majority of my time holding my head in my hands and asking myself "How did this happen? How did <random Bad Thing of the moment> ever seem like a good idea to the author?"
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2019 07:14
|
|
|
is that the one where the protagonist defeats the villain by carving 'tits' into their head with knives, or was that different wildbow story?
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2019 07:18
|
|
|
Weirdly enough that was Twig, the good one. This is very YMMV, but my personal recommendation list (as a guy who enjoyed at least some of these, but still thinks that they're objectively meh and need an editor to take a hacksaw to them): Worm: DBZ with superheroes by someone who doesn't understand the structure and pacing choices that made DBZ work, and thinks he's deconstructing comic book heroes but pretty much just plays them straight. Pact: Legal drama where the lawyers are wizards and demons. I have the fewest bad things to say about this- it's the only one of his things that could be edited into an effective novel with fairly minimal alterations (besides cutting the length by 90%). Twig: Espionage thriller (kind of) set in 1910 in an alternate history where the industrial revolution was triggered by Mary Shelley-style mad science, so the cotton gin is just a plantation filled with zombies and steamliners are just giant fish monsters with rooms inside of them. My personal favorite, even though the author visibly runs out of things to say halfway through and has it go nuts. Ward: Dramatic tragedy about a talented but inexperienced author who refuses to improve or hire an editor and eventually gets driven into a corner by the expectations of his most enthusiastic fans. (It's actually just a straight sequel to Worm, but I super-duper did not enjoy it.)
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2019 07:29
|
|
|
Tunicate posted:is that the one where the protagonist defeats the villain by carving 'tits' into their head with knives, or was that different wildbow story? lmao
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2019 07:38
|
|
|
Tunicate posted:is that the one where the protagonist defeats the villain by carving 'tits' into their head with knives, or was that different wildbow story? The villain's head or the protagonist's head?
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2019 07:46
|
|
|
Qwertycoatl posted:The villain's head or the protagonist's head? The villain is all like "I've got you now," then the protagonist pulls off a wig, turns around to reveal that he wrote a no-no word on his head in sharpie, and the bad guy's face melts off Raiders of the Lost Ark style. Fade to black, retire to your subreddit to be lavished with praise.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2019 08:12
|
|
|
Worm is a cosmic body horror story packaged as a superhero story. Pact and Twig go straight for the horror angle, Ward goes straight for the horror and sometimes remembers it used to be a superhero story. Also inconsistent with Worm. Also Wildbow jesus gently caress stop it with the Word of God write it as text or don't but aaaaaaaaaaaa also buy a calculator before you start saying numbers still my favourite novel of the past several years, but uh
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2019 10:00
|
|
|
I decided not to ever touch Ward when I read that Panacea goes to an alternate universe, conquers herself a planet and starts calling herself Red Queen, so yeah. e: somewhat appropriately, I get the impression that Ward reads a lot like a bad Worm fanfic. Fitting, I suppose, considering how much of that it has spawned. Cardiovorax fucked around with this message at 10:21 on Aug 20, 2019 |
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2019 10:05
|
|
divabot posted:Worm is a cosmic body horror story packaged as a superhero story. Pact and Twig go straight for the horror angle, Ward goes straight for the horror and sometimes remembers it used to be a superhero story. Also inconsistent with Worm. no endbringers have a galaxy's worth of mass within their body and you're going to like it, divabot
|
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2019 10:22
|
|
|
No worry, they're weak to bullying.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2019 10:32
|
|
|
So, ideas brought up but not explored - The most obvious is the whole "scientific investigation of magic", which lasted all of one chapter before things defaulted to "whatever the main character imagines is correct". The problem there is, once you raise the mystery, you have to give an answer. Talking about Atlantis or whatever would have detracted from precious dunking on McGonagall time. The making of the "Bayseian conspiracy" to keep advanced magic secret. Harrriezer needs no allies and protects his secrets with brainwashing and murder.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2019 10:49
|
|
|
Added Space posted:So, ideas brought up but not explored - There are a few occasions early on where Harry thinks about bringing muggle science, technology and methods to not just magic but the wizarding world in general, and then never does. Like when he finds out how wizard money works and realises that, with his wealth and knowledge of commodity markets, he could destroy their economy. Not saying he should have done that, but why bring it up if no one's going to try it? Of course, you could take that as simply a joke intended to poke fun at the less serious aspects of the source material, but that's another example of things that were promised and never delivered on. There are a number of examples early on where Harry is shocked by how things work in the wizarding world and it seems like the story's going to spend some time exploring that, but it never does. It's just the most obvious and shallow observations that everyone's heard before and they're abandoned entirely when Yudkowsky decides that actually he's trying to write a serious story rather than a parody. There's also the stuff about killing dementors. It's pretty clearly set up that Harry is eventually going to go and dismantle Azkaban and hunt down every dementor, and in the end he not only doesn't do that but he actually assigns Hermione to do it instead. Or rather, plans to. The story ends just at the point where he's about to explain this to her. No exploration of how this would be done in practice or what impact it would have on society or how people would react. It's just assumed that it's going to be fine because Hermione can do it and she's immortal now and supposedly killed Voldemort so I guess everyone will just accept it? Or how about Harry and the other students all learning and improvising new combat strategies and teamwork and all that. Could have had that pay off with an actual battle - like the source material did - but nope. The final confrontation is essentially one-on-one. The armies and all the characters introduced for that giant side-plot are totally irrelevant.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2019 11:05
|
|
|
Cardiovorax posted:Worm is kind of amazing in that it takes basically every stereotypical and clichéd superhero comic power ever and demonstrates how completely horrible the world would be if you handed those powers to real people who actually act like people would, instead of unrealistically heroic figments of our imagination. I'll always kind of respect that story for how completely it sucks you into that "...this unpleasantly believable" mindset. "Real people" is a stretch. Worm strains like hell to try and justify things like why no civilians ever just shot any of the not-actually-super-tough villains, why people with superpowers wouldn't just get big bucks jobs in search and rescue or industrial resource extraction, why the government puts up with any of this poo poo instead of dropping a Hellfire missile on the head of supers who cause trouble, etc. Epicurius posted:I mean, Bill and Ted did it better. The tabletop RPG C°ntinuum (published 1999) even has this trick as a codified rule, with time travel-related stats for opposed rolls to determine who wins when multiple time travelers try to use it against each other, Bogus Journey style. YaketySass posted:This is probably going to lead to people explaining the Basilisk all over again, but the thing is that the concept is a logical elaboration of crank ideas Yudkowsky had fiercely defended before. The short version of Roko's Basilisk is that it's Pascal's wager, except the theoretical God is a future AI and also a huge jerk. This is treated as somehow new and insightful and persuasive by some neurotic supernerds, despite how even if you buy completely into the claptrap, it can be negated entirely by just choosing to ignore theoretical future AIs who are huge jerks. Roadie fucked around with this message at 11:35 on Aug 20, 2019 |
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2019 11:10
|
|
|
Don't forget that, despite the fic being ostensibly about exploiting the setting's shaky worldbuilding in inventive ways, most of what Harry does is exploiting rules Yudkowsky invented himself, or just using the Time-Turner to solve every other problem.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2019 11:11
|
|
|
YaketySass posted:Don't forget that, despite the fic being ostensibly about exploiting the setting's shaky worldbuilding in inventive ways, most of what Harry does is exploiting rules Yudkowsky invented himself, or just using the Time-Turner to solve every other problem. It gives me some serious "bad isekai vibes" in places, since those tend to have a lot of the "author vaguely repurposes a ruleset from elsewhere, then invents edge cases and contradictions in it and acts like this is really clever" kind of thing going on.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2019 11:23
|
|
|
TheGreatEvilKing posted:I'll concede that. Nah, that's actually perfectly fine, it saves everyone a lot of time, and gets you right to the purpose of what you're writing.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2019 11:30
|
|
|
Roadie posted:"Real people" is a stretch. Worm strains like hell to try and justify things like why no civilians ever just shot any of the not-actually-super-tough villains, why people with superpowers wouldn't just get big bucks jobs in search and rescue or industrial resource extraction, why the government puts up with any of this poo poo instead of dropping a Hellfire missile on the head of supers who cause trouble, etc. What I really meant was that I think the people, as in the actual characters shown in the story, behave and think and act in a way that I could believe real people would, if put into their situation. The heroes aren't like comicbook characters, not even the grim and edgy ones. Even the villains have this sense of banal, human evil to them, which is something I really liked. Like, I could point you at a hundred people who probably only didn't end up as a Jack Slash or what have you for lack of having a trauma-induced superpower dropped into their lap. Well, your mileage may vary. It's a very fine difference and you might not find it as noticeable as I do.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2019 11:38
|
|
Roadie posted:"Real people" is a stretch. Worm strains like hell to try and justify things like why no civilians ever just shot any of the not-actually-super-tough villains, why people with superpowers wouldn't just get big bucks jobs in search and rescue or industrial resource extraction, why the government puts up with any of this poo poo instead of dropping a Hellfire missile on the head of supers who cause trouble, etc. There was a comment I saw recently that was: See, Worm is a real, sober, serious, super-realistic and intelligent sci-fi deconstruction at what would happen if people started getting superpowers*. * - in a world where a multi-dimensional god-creature and a nigh-omnipotent Illuminati basically work together to make everyone act out comic book tropes.
|
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2019 11:58
|
|
|
Milkfred E. Moore posted:* - in a world where a multi-dimensional god-creature whose name nobody paid enough attention to pronounce correctly and a nigh-omnipotent Illuminati basically work together to make everyone act out comic book tropes.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2019 12:09
|
|
|
I'm not a native speaker, aren't they pronounced the same way in English? And yes, it does kind of hinge on you being able to accept that a magical space whale is using the whole of planet Earth as a petri dish. It's really just a fantasy story dressing up as science fiction, though, kind of like Star Wars, so I don't hold that against it.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2019 12:15
|
|
|
Cardiovorax posted:I'm not a native speaker, aren't they pronounced the same way in English? No. "Scion" is pronounced with an unvoiced S sound as in "ice". "Zion" is pronounced with a voiced Z sound as in "zoo".
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2019 12:24
|
|
|
The space whale thing doesn't even make sense. Stated Objective: make new superpowers to kill other space whales Also Stated Objective: All superpowers must be nerfed so they cannot hurt me, a spacewhale
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2019 16:56
|
|
|
The point of space whale science is to find a way to reverse entropy. Killing each other is an edge case - space whale 1 and space whale 2 are stated to have run into space whale 3 on their way into Earth whalespace and done some peaceful trading during the encounter. I'm guessing it's supposed to make them feel more vast and alien. They're concerned about the eventual heat-death of the universe because they can realistically expect to live long enough on an individual basis that it becomes a problem.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2019 17:06
|
|
|
it's just sci-fi Madoka
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2019 18:09
|
|
|
Cardiovorax posted:What I really meant was that I think the people, as in the actual characters shown in the story, behave and think and act in a way that I could believe real people would, if put into their situation. The heroes aren't like comicbook characters, not even the grim and edgy ones. Even the villains have this sense of banal, human evil to them, which is something I really liked. Like, I could point you at a hundred people who probably only didn't end up as a Jack Slash or what have you for lack of having a trauma-induced superpower dropped into their lap. The state of the world in Worm makes far more sense when you realize that the inner circle of the conspiracy that's manipulating everything consists of four people with absolutely zero qualifications (Contessa was a little girl, Doctor was literally just the person that happened to be there, Alexandria and Eidolon were random teenage ICU patients that were chosen completely at random) and one guy who A: Is a psychopath and B: Really just does their accounting.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2019 00:21
|
|
YaketySass posted:it's just sci-fi Madoka Or the original outline of Mass Effect, where the Reapers were using the minds and innovations of the galaxy to try and calculate a way to stop heat death.
|
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2019 00:29
|
|
|
Stroth posted:The state of the world in Worm makes far more sense when you realize that the inner circle of the conspiracy that's manipulating everything consists of four people with absolutely zero qualifications (Contessa was a little girl, Doctor was literally just the person that happened to be there, Alexandria and Eidolon were random teenage ICU patients that were chosen completely at random) and one guy who A: Is a psychopath and B: Really just does their accounting. That's even worse, though, because it means that the entire conspiracy, and it somehow remaining completely secret despite the main conspirators being some of the both busiest and most well-documented celebrities in the world, just rests on Contessa's author-provided power to win automatically at things.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2019 01:33
|
|
|
Added Space posted:The most obvious is the whole "scientific investigation of magic", which lasted all of one chapter before things defaulted to "whatever the main character imagines is correct". the thing is: for all his pontificating, if you look at Yud's actions, he doesn't actually believe in science. He's an aristotlean -- he makes blind assertions about how the world works, then builds castles in the air on those foundations. that's how you get things like Roko's basilisk. utterly disconnected from reality, but, if you take all of's yud unexamined axioms as true, then sure, it makes sense. unfortunately for yud, while writing super verbose reality fanfiction may be good for building internet cults, it's not actually a very good way to accomplish things. That's why he's produced like 2 papers in the past decade. And they were both just fairly bland math papers, never practical results. Because the world, sometimes, doesn't behave how you expect. That's why you do, like, experiments. HPMOR, then, lets Harezier inhabit a world where blindly asserting things is actually an effective. because Elezier is pulling the strings so that his assumptions are always right. wow, marvel at how smart this kid is, he's so smart he can just magically pull facts about the universe out of his rear end and they turn out to be true, woah!! follow my 5000 word guide to learn how to do this IRL. this also ties in to why he thinks conspiratorial brainwashing is the ideal way to do science. See, if he was actually trying to get results, he'd run into the fact that you *need* lots of support, infrastructure, and collaboration to do effective science -- it's just too difficult to handle on your own. But he's not trying to do science, he's trying to grift money out of his personal cult; and brainwashing's great for that. (all this might seem to contradict his fanboying of bayesianism, but it's actually perfectly consistent. The secret of bayesianism is that you can set your "priors" to whatever you want. You can always set your confidence level so high enough that no evidence can change it; then your priors become, for all intents and purposes, axioms.) animist fucked around with this message at 07:22 on Aug 21, 2019 |
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2019 07:15
|
|
|
YaketySass posted:it's just sci-fi Madoka
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2019 09:43
|
|
|
I kind of skimmed over the earlier parts again now that the end of it is done, and I feel what's really disappointing is that the premise - scientific method applied to magic! - is pretty much completely abandoned. There's not really that much magic, just a warmed-over (Or left to sit on the counter until bacteria grows) Ender's Game. That book seems like Ayn Rand but for kids who never got over being the smartest person in the room until highschool, and a lot of this fanfiction came off like a what-if. 'What if Ender was Everything that was supposed to be done with magic and friendship in the actual novels instead gets done with 'manipulation' and 'Bayes,' and both are presented in the worst way possible. Like very early on, Draco is going on about these cool manipulation and persuasiveness mentoring classes he's getting. And I was thinking 'hah, that's so cute, he's like a kid who had his first karate lesson talking about ninja strikes and backflips but with politics and intrigue.' Except no, that's actually how the author of this poo poo thinks manipulation and persuasiveness are supposed to work. All the childish things are how the world in this works, and every mature response is treated like nonsense.
|
|
#
?
Aug 22, 2019 08:22
|
|
|
I want a refund.
|
|
#
?
Aug 26, 2019 02:26
|
|
|
Malah posted:I want a refund. hpmor as basilisk
|
|
#
?
Aug 27, 2019 09:42
|
|
|
oh god oh gently caress oh god oh gently caress
|
|
#
?
Aug 29, 2019 21:10
|
|
|
Tom Chivers wrote a book about the rationalists - he's good friends with Scott Alexander, as well as a huge fan. https://twitter.com/TomChivers/status/1167068081472135168 Tom, you're so close to getting it.
|
|
#
?
Aug 29, 2019 23:12
|
|
|
Someone please explain to the poor guy that rationalism is about rationality in the same way that scientology is about science.
|
|
#
?
Aug 30, 2019 02:11
|
|
|
We are all lesser for this thing's existence. Yud is lesser for writing it, his community are lesser for encouraging him, the readers are lesser for having this garbage seared into their minds, and SA is lesser for exposing more people to it. Joseph and Xander, excellent job covering this dumpster fire. Now let's throw this monstrosity into a volcano and never speak of it again.
|
|
#
?
Aug 30, 2019 05:05
|
|
|
Cardiovorax posted:The point of space whale science is to find a way to reverse entropy. Killing each other is an edge case - space whale 1 and space whale 2 are stated to have run into space whale 3 on their way into Earth whalespace and done some peaceful trading during the encounter. I think the impression I got from reading Worm was pretty cool. They're space crocodiles that evolved trans-dimensional warping before farming or tool use. They went through massive population collapses because of eating all the prey and that became worrying about the heat death of the universe because one of the really big crocodiles realized it would happen eventually. But since they're not conscious, thinking beings they can't approach the problem directly, they can only amass information and iterate on their 'shards' via an evolutionary design process. it's never going to work because the information gathered is never going to be useful but it's all they can conceive of. I think of them as being like the vampires from blindsight.
|
|
#
?
Aug 30, 2019 18:46
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 3, 2024 10:14 |
|
|
oh my god
|
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2019 01:48
|
|