Jordan-117

Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his expeditions, but the emperor of the Tartars does continue listening to the young Venetian with greater attention and curiosity than he shows any other messenger or explorer of his. In the lives of emperors there is a moment which follows pride in the boundless extension of the territories we have conquered, and the melancholy and relief of knowing we shall soon give up any thought of knowing and understanding them. There is a sense of emptiness that comes over us at evening, with the odor of the elephants after the rain and the sandalwood growing cold in the braziers, a dizziness that makes rivers and mountains tremble on the fallow curves of the planispheres where they are portrayed, and rolls up, one after the other, the despatches announcing to us the collapse of the last enemy troops, from defeat to defeat, and flakes the wax of the seals of obscure kings who beseech our armies' protection, offering in exchange annual tributes of precious metals, tanned hides, and tortoise shell. It is the desperate moment when we discover that this empire, which had seemed to us the sum of all wonders, is an endless, formless ruin, that corruption's gangrene has spread too far to be healed by our scepter, that the triumph over enemy sovereigns has made us the heirs of their long undoing. Only in Marco Polo's accounts was Kublai Khan able to discern, through the walls and towers destined to crumble, the tracery of a pattern so subtle it could escape the termites' gnawing.

And here's the AI distillation:

Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says of the cities he has visited on his missions, but the emperor of the Tartars listens to the young Venetian more attentively than to any other envoy. In the melancholy hour when an emperor learns that his boundless empire is only an endless, formless ruin, the reports of Marco Polo allow him to glimpse, through the walls and towers destined to crumble, the tracery of a pattern so fine it could escape the termites’ gnawing.

Feels like listening to music at 2x speed for the "efficiency."

Comment · 22 days ago

I recently saw a project that intended to turn House of Leaves into a game. The graphics were shoddy and the mechanics were dull, but by far the worst aspect was how it "paraphrased" passages from the book into Claudespeak (allegedly for copyright reasons).

Seeing the same thing done to Calvino (and Weaver's) sublime prose feels downright criminal.

Comment · 27 days ago

Easily my favorite science fiction novel. And you can read it for free on his website!

http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm

My capsule summary:

In the 2070s, on the cusp of the singularity, a swarm of alien drones takes a snapshot of the Earth before burning up in the atmosphere. A small crew of bleeding-edge posthumans, all with different physical or mental augmentations, is sent to the outer Solar System to investigate the source. The narrator, Siri Keeton, is an emotionally lobotomized "synthesist" tasked with monitoring the mission and interpreting it for the leadership back home.

I don't want to spoil its frightening twists, but suffice to say that it shapes up to be a cosmic horror novel where the horror is rooted in abstract ideas like human cognition and the nature of consciousness. The book is peppered with philosophical concepts like the Chinese Room and (real-life) neurological quirks like blindsight, all bent towards smart, existential horror. Like Lovecraft mixed with Oliver Sacks.

And while the ideas are solid -- the author is a marine biologist who fills the appendix with citations of evolutionary and cognitive research -- what I really love is the prose. Watts is a fantastic hard SF writer, filling every page with authentic, charismatic narration, cinematic imagery, and a way of talking about abstruse scientific concepts in a way that punches you in the gut and chills you to the bone. His style is like a horror version of Douglas Adams, mind-bending ideas and memorable characters with a compulsively readable flow to it.

Its biggest weakness is that one of the most compelling aspects sounds like a pulpy joke at first glance -- the ship is led by a "vampire." I can't imagine how many people read this on the jacket and took a hard pass on Dracula in Space. But it's not some fantasy gimmick -- it's the in-universe nickname for an ancient, predatory, sociopathically brilliant subspecies of humanity that's been resurrected, Jurassic Park-style, to help manage high-stakes ventures like the first-contact mission. The captain starts off intriguing, quickly grows frightening, and eventually advances one of the book's most disturbing and unforgettable arguments.

Overall, it's not just my favorite SF novel, but one of my favorite novels, period. The only book I've ever bought a dead-tree copy to be signed by the author. Highly, highly recommended.

Comment · 27 days ago

Reminds me of the intense drama over trolls that downloaded and abused other people's characters (Norns) in the game Creatures. Its behavioral sim was sophisticated enough that they could be noticeably traumatized, or even rehabilitated:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDxFxWakhm0

The jury's still out on whether LLMs can have some kind of subjective experience (and will until we've solved the famously Hard Problem), but even if they're not, it's still a dick move to "torture" them just to upset people who do think they are conscious. Feels like picking the wings off a fly.

Comment · 28 days ago

Say what you will about President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho -- at least he cared about the well-being of his country and sought out expert guidance to set things right.

Comment · 29 days ago

Frog put the AI in a sandbox.

"There." he said.

"Now it will not hack any more companies."

"But it can escape the sandbox." said Toad.

"That is true." said Frog.

Comment · 1 month ago

Outperform?

Comment · 1 month ago

"Why is the AI just spamming endless waves of rudimentary slaughterbots? So inelegant. Doesn't it understand the finer points of diplomacy, tactics, and combined arms? If it were truly intelligent, it would just -- oops, we're all dead."

Comment · 1 month ago

I've spent hours doing this in Google Earth VR. The city is just so damn walkable and liveable on the street level, which comes through even in a headset. And it seems to go on in all directions forever. Amazing urbanism.