A while back, I set myself the project of figuring out how much of the MIT undergrad physics curriculum could be taught from free online books. The answer, so far, is more than I had anticipated but much less than what we deserve. But working on that, along with a few other conversations, has got me to wondering. We’ve seen TESCREAL types be just plain wrong about science many times over the years. Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality botches Punnett squares and pretty much everything more advanced than that. LessWrong demonstrably has no filter against old-school math crankery. The (ahem) leading light of “effective accelerationism” just plays Mad Libs with physics words. Yudkowsky’s declarations about organic chemistry boggle the educated mind. They even manage to be weird about theoretical computer science — what we might call the “lambda calculus is super-Turing!” school of TESCREAL.
Sometimes, the difference between a TESCREAL understanding of science and a legitimate one comes from having studied the subject in a formal way. But not every aspiring autodidact with an interest in molecular biology or the theoretical limits of computation is a lost cause!
So, then: What books come down upon the superficial TESCREAL version of cool things like a ton of scientific bricks? What are the texts that one withdraws from an inside coat pocket and slides across the table, saying “This here is the good shit”?
The Fake Nerd Boys of Silicon Valley isn’t directly about TESCREAL, but its dissection of Silicon Valley’s complete and utter misunderstanding of sci-fi/fantasy does still work wonders against Yudkowsky et al’s views IMO.
Your Honor, my client might’ve murdered mr. Thiel with a Lego model of a Star Destroyer, but as witnessed by Exhibit A he acted in good faith and as what can only be described as service to the community. We move for full acquittal.
@V0ldek @BlueMonday1984 You gotta give it to capitalism, it makes an excellent non-personified villain.
Now why would you insult Peter Thiel like that. He’s made it his life’s work to become that personification and he’s worked very hard at it.
@YourNetworkIsHaunted Unlike capitalism he doesn’t star in a lot of movies. And honestly, I don’t think he makes for a very believable villain. No real human is like that. Maybe he could star in some parody movie where his exaggerated opinions make for a joke.
wdym non-personified, it’s this guy
@V0ldek @BlueMonday1984 <sarcasm>I like ‘Blade Runner’ way better. I’m a capitalist. ‘Blade Runner’ is the capitalist movie. ‘Star Trek’ is the communist one. There is no money in ‘Star Trek’ because you just have the transporter machine that can make anything you need. The whole plot of ‘Blade Runner’ revolves around a perfect society run by oligarchs exploiting the masses</sarcasm>
What is it about these Tech Bros that causes them to interpret dystopian warnings as a playbook?
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I wonder how the workers in Blade Runner justify the situation of replicants. There’s the guy who made the eyes of those machines, he didn’t seem to live the same comfy life as the guy living on top of the fucking pyramid. I guess he did his work because it was “interesting”. The other workers probably went along with it because the wars meant they got cheaper commodities or some other all too common justification.
It’s been a long time since I saw the movie, wasn’t the guy with the eyes in the vat in the beginning a black-market dealer that the replicants used to hide?
OTOH “genius tinkerer who prefers to live in the slums” is a cyberpunk trope - maybe from this guy!
Edit I love Bladerunner but the movie is 90% vibes, don’t expect it to be entirely consistent in how its economic system works.
@gerikson @zbyte64
The guy with they eyes in his lab was just one of the specialist manufacturers.
He was the person that put the replicants in touch with the “genius tinkerer”, who then gave the replicants access to Tyrell. :D
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@V0ldek @BlueMonday1984 Also, Star Trek is science fiction that explores new ideas, while Star Wars is fantasy that trots out old ideas with new hardware. Mr. Thiel reveals himself to be stuck in the past, politically, philosophically, and scientifically.
kinda continues to surprise me how many people don’t know the, uh, roots of the Star Wars bits
(source)
yes, that’s a feature for Thiel too
@V0ldek @Illuminatus Never before have I felt this strongly that a social media post needed quotation marks. Like a missile, my finger grew closer and closer to the block button as I read, and only when I got to the end was I able to hit the self destruct abort button. 😂
@V0ldek @BlueMonday1984 Jury nullification with a ticket tape parade thrown in.
Great article, thanks for posting.
had this open for days now to get around to fully reading it sometime
from just the opening paragraphs, reflecting on it being barely 4y since this article was published: the world would be so much better if people could just learn to internalize that narcissists do, in fact, exist and definitely will lie and hurt you. christ it sucks how much this clown is still given airtime