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[BST] How would a rationalist His Dark Materials (Philip Pullman) progress?

• Author: u/360Saturn *

• URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3nupmc/bst_how_would_a_rationalist_his_dark_materials/

• Score: 14

• Created: 2015-10-07T15:45:07

Post:

I don't know how big a following this series has in the States, but I know in the UK it was pretty big at about the same time Harry Potter was starting to get big, but before it completely blew up.

First protagonist Lyra owns a device that can answer any question truthfully, but rarely asks it anything unless someone else asks her to or unless a particular question strikes her. Second protagonist Will owns a knife that can cut windows between worlds allowing people to pass between them. Basic plot points include the discovery of other worlds, the Church of Lyra's world desiring to destroy knowledge, and Will and Lyra journeying to the afterlife to free the souls of the dead, who currently inhabit a kind of limbo, rather than the Heaven or Hell they were promised by authorities. There's also a force called Dust, which is basically conscious dark matter and thought to be central to the development of human intelligence, which is discovered to be depleting in some worlds for unknown reasons.

Here's a plot summary page from its series wiki. I'm hoping some people on the sub will know the series already because it's a bit tricky to summarise.

While there was a film adaptation in 2007 it was a loose adaptation and cut out a lot of the series' key themes of science, magic, religion and political manouvering, in favour of creating a fantasy action flick like Eragon or The Chronicles of Narnia. I've always wondered what an adaptation of it that's what HPMOR is to Harry Potter would be like.

Comments:

u/boomfarmer [+12] Trying to be helpful (5 hours later)

Some notes on The Subtle Knife:

• Two edges, one which is merely the sharpest knife in the worlds, and the other which cuts between worlds.
• The Subtle Knife invariably wounds its current master. Will loses some fingers.
• By the end of the series, the knife is broken, repaired, and broken.
• Cutting between worlds requires intense focus. Distractions can break the knife.
• The windows which the knife cut are not flat. They have a slight depth, which is a void that Dust leaks out of the universes through.

Some notes on Dust:

• Dust loss is Bad.
• Dust is produced through love consciousness.
• All the worlds can produce enough Dust to leave one (1) window open and keep Dust levels in equilibrium.

Some notes on windows:

• Can be produced through a number of things, a list which is known to include the Subtle Knife, Lyra's father's apparatus, the Bomb's machinery, and natural occurrences.
• Anyone can be taught to feel the edge of a window.
• Windows have an intuitive drag-and-drop interface for resizing.
• Natural phenomena can pass through windows, like rain.
• I don't recall if wind passes through windows, or if air pressure differences were noticeable.

Some notes on denizens of the Universe:

• Angels exist, and can fly. They are not Dust.
• Humans from Lyra's world have daemons, who are physical manifestations of part of their soul. Humans from other worlds do not, but can be trained to see daemons. Witches from Lyra's world can see non-Lyra's-world humans' daemons. Daemons are generally not able to live away from their human, but there are solutions: training to stretch the bond, or cutting the bond with a special knife. Those so cut are ... different. Not in a good way.
• There are Lilliputians, who have trans-universe resonator fiddles that allow vibration-based communications.
• God exists, and is merely the first angel.
• If a being from one universe lives too long in another, without returning home, they will die.
• Will and Lyra are from different universes.

Some notes in general:

• This is not a happy series.

u/IllusoryIntelligence [+3] (23 hours later)

One slight inaccuracy in the above, dust is a product of consciousness, not love.

u/boomfarmer [+1] Trying to be helpful (a day later)

Thanks! I've corrected it above.

u/TK17Studios [+3] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (14 hours later)

You have succeeded in your "trying to be helpful" goal. I really appreciated this.

u/protagnostic [+2] (a day later)

All the worlds can produce enough Dust to leave one (1) window open and keep Dust levels in equilibrium.

It's been a while, but I remember thinking that it was just Will and Lyra's worlds that were relevant here - and that it was explicitly with the instruction that they needed to go encourage the population to... something. Think for themselves, maybe?

u/protagnostic [+1] (a day later)

Oh! Also, there are natural window-like phenomena which don't leak dust, which the angels use to travel.

u/ArgentStonecutter [+6] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (15 minutes later)

A rational Lyra would munchkin the heck out of the alethiometer.

I found the series starting out pretty rational, without anyone spending too much time holding the idiot ball, but each new plot token made things more depressingly mystical. I honestly don't recall if I finished it.

u/sir_pirriplin [+5] (20 hours later)

A rational Lyra would most likely be incapable of reading it.

It's not very clear, but didn't the alethiometer work only for children and people with childlike personalities?

A scientist from Earth managed to make a computer program that worked as an alethiometer and didn't have that limitation, but then again, maybe the program only works for her.

u/ArgentStonecutter [+1] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (21 hours later)

It's not very clear, but didn't the alethiometer work only for children and people with childlike personalities?

Would a rational!HDM have that restriction?

u/sir_pirriplin [+5] (21 hours later)

I think it would be a cheap move to remove that restriction.

It's much more fun to find ways to work around it. For example, could Lyra have taught another (younger) child how to read the thing before she loses her 'innocence'?

You could even ask the alethiometer itself how to solve that problem. In canon, the alethiometer actually told a human scientist (through Lyra) how to make a computer program that works like an alethiometer. This opens the door for recursive improvement!

In addition, maybe the alethiometer has a mind of its own, and it could be possible to negotiate with it.

u/ArgentStonecutter [+5] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (21 hours later)

Perhaps a rational!Coulter would be the protagonist of a rational!HDM?

u/drageuth2 [+2] (a day later)

I wonder if, potentially, a person who is too 'grown up' to use the alethiometer could sufficiently regress themselves to a childlike state by getting very drunk. Or perhaps with hallucinogenic drugs...

If you could find a line where you're smashed enough to use the thing, but still in control enough to write down results and ask it useful questions...

u/Cruithne [+1] Light Sith epistemologist (a day later)

"A smell of petroleum prevails throughout.”

u/None [+5] (an hour later)

I read the books when I was eleven, and IMO it's definitely one of the best YA series there are. Anyway: was Dust drawn to sentient/sapient/conscious individuals or species? If it's the first case, it could be used to determine whether brain-damaged patients are vegetative or locked-in/minimally conscious (but it could've been of no use in the universe of HDM - I don't remember if Dust was a cause for consciousness or a product of it - if it was the cause, I guess brain damage could be irrelevant).

The alethiometer was really vague since it replied with allegorical images - Mary Malone's computer was better for the purpose of communicating with Dust since it allowed conversation via text.

Also, if someone wrote a HPMOR-esque fanfic of HDM, I'd love them forever.

u/None [+4] (4 hours later)

Dust was drawn to shaped things as well, I remember - a statue attracts more than a chunk of wood, for example.

u/gabbalis [+5] (an hour later)

The spectres can be manipulated and upgraded with the right prompting... Actually they're a bit like HPMOR dementors in that way aren't they? Make of that what you will. It's certainly a dangerous game to play.

u/Chronophilia [+4] sci-fi ≠ futurology (6 hours later)

There's a series I need to re-read. Wasn't Lord Asriel literally trying to kill God? Fun times.

u/PeridexisErrant [+4] put aside fear for courage, and death for life (11 hours later)

He was more focussed on setting up a 'republic of Heaven', and resigned to the fact that this meant war against the Authority. Deicide was basically just an implementation detail of utopianism.

u/None [+3] (4 hours later)

Also, God exists. He was deposed in a coup and now Metatron runs Heaven as a colonial authoritarian empire spanning the multiverse.

u/VorpalAuroch [+2] Life before Death (2 hours later)

Plug for Effulgence: The same personality as Luminosity (and also by Alicorn). Messes with some other things, and while this particular thread is HDM!Witch Bella in not-quite-HDM-world, it merges into a big-ass crossover fic.

But yes, getting a natural reader like Lyra and abusing the alethiometer heavily is prominent.

u/boomfarmer [+2] Trying to be helpful (4 hours later)

... How am I supposed to read this? Important parts seem to be missing if I just click the "next" and "previous" buttons.

u/VorpalAuroch [+4] Life before Death (4 hours later)

Gaps would be the places where it has crossed over and went into someone else's thread. here is the official reading guide and the chapter index.

u/boomfarmer [+1] Trying to be helpful (3 days later)

Oh my. I had to come back to this after one of the Bellas took an Ender's-Game Jane to visit a Marvel Jarvis, referencing the HHGTTG Milliways. This ... is something.

u/VorpalAuroch [+2] Life before Death (3 days later)

The glowfic Milliways is... descended from Hitchhiker's. But not all that similar. It is a bar, and it is at the end of (some) universe. But it's actually taken from a common conceit of sandbox livejournal RPs, where the door to Milliways can suddenly show up behind any door in any world at the whims of a capricious, inscrutable force, time passing in Milliways doesn't pass in the world you came from unless you hold the door open, and the bar is a (female) person and can generate an almost unlimited supply of nonmagical objects for sale. (First drink is free.)

u/boomfarmer [+1] Trying to be helpful (3 days later)

Sounds like a neat conceit.

glowfic

So called because it's part of the Luminosity universe?

u/VorpalAuroch [+2] Life before Death (4 days later)

It's the collective term for Alicorn et al.'s writings in roughly this format; following Luminosity and Radiance, there is Effulgence, Incandescence (defunct), and a number of other collaborations, which writers have mutually agreed to all give light-themed names.

u/MaxDougwell [+2] (15 hours later)

While some of Effulgence is fun, I gave up on it for two reasons:
The formulaic approach of giving Bell a way to take over the world, then having most of the obstacles melt away, sometimes in ways that don't even make sense.
The second author's devotion to their character Whistles.

u/MugaSofer [+1] (21 hours later)

Hmm. Wasn't it possible for humans to become immortal angels somehow? That seems like a good idea.

I'm not sure if the Compass (I'm not typing it's name on my phone) actually ran on Pure Sapience or just asked a helpful Angel/devil questions. It's a pretty big distinction.

The afterlife is weird and doesn't make a lot of sense.

u/boomfarmer [+3] Trying to be helpful (a day later)

The Dust itself answers the questions, and is essentially a lightly sarcastic oracle.

If you die, you go to the Afterlife, where you float as a ghost. You gradually fade away, losing memories and personality until you're not there. Heaven, hell, and everything else is a walled island, guarded by harpies. Lyra and Will visit the Afterlife by using the Knife to open a window in an area where a bunch of people died recently. The world of the afterlife is the same as the world of the living, no matter what world you're in, but it is only populated by the recently-departed. They find their way to a local dock, where a ferryman carries them across to the island. Daemons cannot ride on the dock, and the separation is painful.

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

As far as I remember, the needles of the alethiometer were moved by Dust.

u/MugaSofer [+1] (a day later)

Right, I'm just not sure what that actually means. Was that dark-matter communicator essentially an Alethiometer, or does the Compass tap into some innate tendency of dust to find answers?

It's been a while since I read the books, and I think this was answered somewhere in the worst one :(

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