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95 lines
7.5 KiB
Markdown
95 lines
7.5 KiB
Markdown
## [FF] Saruman of Many Devices, Chapter 13
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* Author: u/_ShadowElemental *Sufficiently Analyzed Magic**
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* URL: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/7568728/13/Saruman-of-many-Devices
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* Score: 17
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* Created: 2015-09-12T23:03:07
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### Post:
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[Link to content](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/7568728/13/Saruman-of-many-Devices)
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### Comments:
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> **u/_ShadowElemental** [+4] *Sufficiently Analyzed Magic* (2 minutes later)
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>
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> After [~ a year?] break in updates, a new chapter is out!
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>
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> Note that this is not my work, but only the first chapter has been posted to /r/rational before and this is good tech-munchikining and Enlightenment culture stuff in what is arguably *the* definitive Romanticism!Fantasy 'verse, which I think the subreddit might like.
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>> **u/PeridexisErrant** [+5] *put aside fear for courage, and death for life* (9 hours later)
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>>
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>> FYI - it updates somewhat more often, in sub-chapter chunks, [on Spacebattles](https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/saruman-of-many-devices.256776/)
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>> **u/noggin-scratcher** [+2] *I am a happy tree* (2 hours later)
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>>
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>> Well, thanks for posting it... am now starting at the beginning.
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>>
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>> Having seen the chapter-length, this could take *some time*.
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>> **u/callmebrotherg** [+1] *now posting as /u/callmesalticidae* (4 hours later)
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>>
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>> Goodness. There was one story I remember reading which would give brief summaries of what had already happened, whenever it updated after a long hiatus. It was really helpful for refreshing the memory.
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>>
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>> I wish that more stories did that.
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> **u/iamthelowercase** [+3] (2 hours later)
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>
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> I remember reading this. I got through... I forget, somewhere in chapter 10 I think. Then I just hit this "y'know what, I've had my fill of Saruman!Orcs curbstomping everything they come across, no matter how awesome it may be" threshold. I was devouring it before that.
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>
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> What I remember certainly _sounds_ like the sidebar description of rational fiction, though. There is One Big Rulebreaking Lie, but that One Big Lie is what makes it Saruman of Many Devices and not Lord of the Rings.
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>> **u/PresN** [+5] (6 hours later)
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>>
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>> Is it really Saruman!Orcs, though? I mean, the One Big Rulebreaking Lie is [Spoilers ](#s "that Saruman basically makes no decisions at any point in the story; the alien AI tells him what the next step in its selected path is and he "magically invents" whatever nonsense technology it told him to that it takes for his units to level up. Fortunately, all his troops understand the ridiculous new weaponry without any training as well as an ooc sense of modern military humor, even though it's completely out of place in the world they were born in 5 months prior.")
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>>> **u/derefr** [+7] (a day later)
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>>>
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>>> That's a bit of a harsh interpretation. Mostly true, though.
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>>>
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>>> The story itself *claims* that the AI, Palantir, is effectively only capable of projecting and simulating possible futures given certain changes that might be made. In this way, it's an expy of Center from S.M. Stirling's *General* series[1]—though with a lot less personality.
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>>>
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>>> Saruman is *supposedly* doing all the original invention, though you don't see him actually act to invent anything. You just see Palantir show Saruman one future, and then start showing him alternate futures with *useful, high-level* changes seemingly coming from nowhere.
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>>>
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>>> I think this is perfectly plausible, though (and the parent design, Center, is likewise kind of inefficient), because, if a device both:
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>>>
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>>> * can simulate possible futures, with full respect of physics; and
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>>>
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>>> * has a knowledge base of potentially-useful, non-trivial ways that people and things could be altered;
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>>>
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>>> then all you need to get a full *optimization process* out of that is the third leg: a preference function.
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>>>
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>>> Saruman's brain—or specifically, his immediate subconscious reactions to seeing each projection Palantir provides—seems to serve as that preference function. Palantir does all the constraint-solving of deciding what alternate futures to show Saruman; Saruman implicitly "chooses" between those futures to impose new constraints. The suggestion in the story is that Saruman is actually doing the invention himself, through this choosing process.
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>>>
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>>> It would be okay if the story just went that far, showing the process in slow, grudging detail a few times, and then abstracted it, presuming Saruman is just constantly fiddling around exploring invention-space. He is a wizard and a genius, after all; that's the sort of thing he is *for*. But the story kind of screws this cool idea up, by *also* having Palantir feed him imagery from modern Earth as part of its visuals, visuals of events with no relevance to the setting that he can draw inspiration from, visuals that make no sense unless Palantir is actively trying to guide Saruman using a preference function of its own in the way Center guides Raj.
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>>>
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>>> Basically, it's this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPLiaYD1lUo
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>>>
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>>> ---
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>>>
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>>> [1] Do read the *The General* books, though. Probably a bit irrational in that the AI Center, though driven to win a war, only suggests a technology once—the gatling gun, if I recall. It's mostly just an aid with military tactics, like having an old general (with perfect memory, who can use your sensory input to construct 3D terrain models) on consult.
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>>>> **u/PresN** [+3] (a day later)
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>>>>
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>>>> Hmm, an odd and inefficient AI constraint (Saruman may have preferences for what would best solve current problem X, but they're shaped and guided by Palantir because only Palantir knows/understands what the long-term consequences may be, and even minor details like presentation order of options can affect Saruman's decisions.
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>>>>
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>>>> The invention thing gets undermined a bit, in my opinion, simply by the fact that he's really only doing engineering, not inventing- like in the beginning, for instance, he's thinking about the gun that he just saw and how far it can shoot, and Palantir shows him a rifled gun, and he likes the longer range. So, he has to figure out how to actually contruct a rifled gun, but he doesn't need to invent it- he knows what it is, that it works, and what it looks like, so it's just the manufacturing process that needs to be created, with some experimentation as to materials/tolerances. It's certainly a lot of work, even work that takes a lot of brainpower, but it's not the same thing as actually inventing the end result, especially when he knows for a fact that it can be done at his current capabilities, he just needs to work out how.
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>>>>
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>>>> Really though, what annoyed me about the fic wasn't the tech rampup (that was fun, so I just ignore details that I don't like) but the orcs- by the last chapter, they're running around acting exactly like semi-modern mil-fic characters, one ooh-rah away from being mid-90s US army special forces fiction characters. Giving guns to orcs, or to <1-year-old Uruk-hai, does not confer upon them an entirely alien culture that matches nothing in Middle Earth at all, but looks suspiciously like a real-world analogue.
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>>> **u/Transfuturist** [+1] *Carthago delenda est.* (19 hours later)
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>>>
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>>> Right, I'm not reading this.
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> **u/mycroftxxx42** [+3] (11 hours later)
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>
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> Nice to see this moving again. It's entirely military!porn, but it's amusing to see modern infantry curbstomp everything else.
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> **u/SergeantMatt** [+2] (an hour later)
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>
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> This story has really improved since it's early chapters, started out kinda infodumpy without much characterization.
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---
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