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Robert Anton Wilson - Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy

  • Author: u/None *

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  • Score: 4

  • Created: 2014-01-05T16:43:57

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u/DeliaEris [+4] Fully General Idealist (11 hours later)

I think this might be the polar opposite of rationalist fiction; it seems to explicitly endorse all forms of insanity.

There is, of course, much more similarity between a thing and its opposite than between two randomly-selected things. Which are more alike: blue and yellow, or blue and an armadillo?

Edit: ...and in the next thirty seconds of reading after I wrote that, I encountered the word "antirationalism" in the text for the first time.

u/None [+1] (a day later)

There is, of course, much more similarity between a thing and its opposite than between two randomly-selected things. Which are more alike: blue and yellow, or blue and an armadillo?

Indeed. I've read a lot of books in the Illuminatus! series (including these), and there are a few gems. I'm a fan of Celine's laws, and apparently EY is sufficiently satisfied with them to toss a mention in the more recent chapters of HPMOR. So it's not all bunk.

u/Escapement [+2] Ankh-Morpork City Watch (2 days later)

I liked the Illuminatus! Trilogy, as well as some related wroks, but there is basically very little that is 'rational' or promotes 'rationality' about them. They're interesting and bizarre, and may be quite worth reading, but they are not rationalist fiction in any meaningful sense.

u/None [+1] (2 days later)

Yep, I'd agree with that. Cheers!

u/None [+3] (7 hours later)

What I love about this trilogy is that each book illustrates a different interpretation of quantum physics. Book 1, The Universe Next Door, is in accord with the many worlds interpretation of quantum physics. Book 2, The Trick Top Hat, has characters connected through non-locality. And book 3, The Homing Pigeons, is in an "observer-created universe" in which consciousness causes wavefunction collapse. Preeetty cool.