77 KiB
[D] Mr. Yudkowsky on the lack of munchkinism in Worm
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Author: u/ToaKraka https://i.imgur.com/OQGHleQ.png*
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3q4uod/d_mr_yudkowsky_on_the_lack_of_munchkinism_in_worm/
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Score: 70
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Created: 2015-10-25T10:03:42
Post:
I'm starting to have trouble reading Worm fanfiction about Panacea without my mental screaming drowning out the words. Her underuse of her powers is maybe the worst in that universe, short of Eidolon. It's like if Contessa was using her Path to Victory only to win at blackjack. Panacea is "total control over biology, including the ability to create new organisms with new complex abilities or immediately alter a virus to reverse its effects" being used to "heal physical injuries at a local hospital". There's a reason she's psychologically crippled in canon, the same reason Bonesaw and Siberian are in the Slaughterhouse Nine. If you have a non-crippled Panacea in your story, there is no story! By the time your story starts she's already made a virus that cured cancer, and designed trees that would grow sushi in a desert from seawater, and altered some humans to live outdoors on Mars, and maybe built an intelligence-enhancing bacterium, and converted irredeemable capes into her loyal minions by touch brain control, and bribed others to participate in Endbringer battles by converting them into immortal youthful supermen...
Characters in Worm whose powers suffice to easily take over the world: Eidolon, Glaistig Ulaine, Panacea, Contessa, Bonesaw (instantly); and then Number Man, Dinah, Accord, Tattletale, Coil, Leet, Andrew Richter, Teacher, the Yang-ban... I've probably forgotten like half of them. I wonder if a prerequisite of a work generating an enormous quantity of fic is an enormous amount of untapped potential.
Sigh. Maybe it's not a fair complaint. Out of the whole Forbes 400, nobody except Elon Musk makes any attempt to live up to the potential of their power, and nobody around them notices anything odd. It should be the bug-control girl that ends up as the hinge of destiny. You should have to go that far down the cape list to find one Munchkin.
Clarification (source, archive):
To be clear, I wasn't criticizing Wildbow. The original Worm does what it sets out to do as well as any story possibly could - it's trying (successfully) to be the Superhero Story To End All Superhero Stories, the category killer for its category, that doesn't let you ever look at superhero stories the same way again; the same thing I set out to do with HPMOR and Harry Potter fanfiction. Wildbow is rationalizing and therefore of necessity preserving every aspect of traditional superhero stories, including Reed Richards Is Useless, excusing them and lawfulizing them as hard as he possibly can (and no harder). Even so the power balance in Worm is ludicrous but there's no way a human-level author could possibly avert that, given that they were trying to rationalize something akin to the Marvel or DC multiverse to start with; you just can't have economic balance or the weakest inexploitability given that many different superhero-level powers. Wildbow has thrown on at least four layers of inhibitors to try to rationalize why his Earth goes on spinning despite that, and that's the most he can possibly do without changing the nature of his universe.
What makes the voices start shrieking in my head is when I read a fanfic that's unaware of this, and depicts happy cheerful sane Amy not taking over the world (nor being attacked by the Simurgh or blocked by Contessa).
(Have read Amelia, check.)
Comments:
u/TimTravel [+43] (15 minutes later)
If she were going to do that she'd probably get Simurgh'd before the story begins.
It's possible her shard induces psychological limitations on its use, since her biological father and shard-sharer also made strict rules/restrictions for himself.
u/None [+33] (an hour later)
Shards have outright fucked with people and Wildbow cites Nilbog as an example of a shard subtly shaping behavior to achieve an end (Nilbog's shard was supposed to serve a goal beyond "end the world" so he stays put)
And she's fucked in the head. You have to take a story for what it is sometimes. Panacea is just not that character, which is fine.
If this was a comic book, with a bunch of writers trying to justify dumb conceits foisted on them by the Comics Code (but-but it's more rational for Batman to not kill the Joker honest!) then I'd be infuriated too. But the narrative never acts as if there's anything noble there, in fact, it's the opposite.
It gets even worse when he says that people like Number Man aren't achieving their potential because they're not taking over the world. That's just outright dumb, given Number Man's goals.
u/Transfuturist [+7] Carthago delenda est. (10 hours later)
What are the Number Man's goals, precisely? Besides saving the multiverse.
u/MugaSofer [+22] (12 hours later)
Fanon is that he wants to fight Countessa, IIRC - he's biding his time to learn how - but in canon I'm pretty sure he's just a 9-to-5 worker who wants to live his live in relative comfort.
u/sanctaphrax [+21] (16 hours later)
He's weirdly normal, when you get right down to it.
Former serial killer, secret master of the world, proponent of a strange amoral philosophy, super-powered thinking/killing machine, basically just a guy.
u/None [+7] (18 hours later)
To be fair, I imagine he puts in a little more than "9-5" for Cauldron.
u/None [+3] (12 hours later)
I was speaking specifically of that goal.
u/eaglejarl [+7] (14 hours later)
Shards have outright fucked with people and Wildbow cites Nilbog as an example of a shard subtly shaping behavior to achieve an end (Nilbog's shard was supposed to serve a goal beyond "end the world" so he stays put)
This right here is why I so strongly dislike Worm. It's an entire slew of interlocking narrative cheats designed to excuse absolutely anything. Villains wearing spandex and robbing banks instead of CuttingLexLuthorACheck? The shards did it! Character not living up to his potential? The shards did it! Every single person carrying the Conflict Ball? The shards...you get the idea. This is not an example of good writing. And then, of course, the entire thing is grimdark without any relief.
It frustrates me so much. The only thing that frustrates me more is that so many smart people love it; it's very unlikely that I'm the only sane man, so I wish to heck I knew what it was that all of them see that I don't.
u/alexanderwales [+8] Time flies like an arrow (15 hours later)
It's one of those things that bothers me about Worm, but I just push it to the side as one of those things that I don't really have to like. I mean, there are lots of other works of fiction that just take the whole "capes and superpowers" thing as their conceit and run with it, without feeling the need to add in lots of justifications. Worm adds those justifications in, and for me it doesn't really work, but I don't find this to be too much worse than if that justification weren't there at all. Obviously YMMV.
The persistent darkness is a much bigger issue, partly because there are so few breathers.
u/None [+20] (15 hours later)
Except, barring extreme cases like Nilbog characters have clear reasons for what they do. Take Taylor's intractable issue with Tagg: you can't blame it on shards EDIT: Or rather, it's totally explicable in terms of character motivations.
In fact, I wonder how often we'd hear this complaint if Wildbow had never mentioned shards in the Nilbog WoG or had abruptly stopped the story before getting into the origin of powers.
u/sanctaphrax [+17] (16 hours later)
The endless shard justifications mostly show up in fan discussions. If they were all over the story, I'd like it a lot less.
Honestly, you don't need space magic to get the original Undersiders to be criminals. Robbing people is actually a sensible way to make money if you have Grue's powers and live in a disintegrating nation where the police have thoroughly lost control.
Similarly, plenty of people fail to live up to their potential in real life. And the conflicts in the story mostly feel organic. At least in my opinion.
But fans, for whatever reason, love to talk about the entities.
As for the darkness...how dark it is is a matter of opinion, and how dark it should be is a matter of taste. Maybe it's just not your thing.
u/eaglejarl [+5] (17 hours later)
Honestly, you don't need space magic to get the original Undersiders to be criminals.
You kinda do, for most of them.
Regent, yes. He was a bad guy, I find it completely believable that he was a criminal.
Maybe Grue goes bad...maybe. I never really understood why he chose villain, and I'm pretty sure there are more lucrative things to do with superpowers, although I'd have to think about it. Seems more like alien space worms than common sense to me.
Imp only went bad because she followed Grue.
Tattletale should have been insider trading or front running stocks. What she was doing -- highly visible street crime for comparative pennies -- was ridiculous for a smart character whose power was information.
I never got why Bitch was an active villain, other than "these people are my pack and they want to be villains."
Taylor...well, Taylor was just a bit of an idiot. If she wanted to make a difference, she chose about the least effective way to start doing it. And then she only went villain because Armsmaster was likewise an idiot. If someone tells you they're going to infiltrate the bad guys but can't tell you too much...go with it. At the worst they are a criminal who is already on your radar. At best they can actually bring down a group.
and live in a disintegrating nation where the police have thoroughly lost control.
That's got it the wrong way around. The nation has disintegrated (if it has) because so many capes have decided that the best way to make money is to rob banks. There are so many better ways to achieve power and/or wealth, all of them either perfectly legal or illegal but white collar and not at all visible. Again, why isn't Tattletale just doing insider trading / front running stocks?
In the real world, sure, there will be some crazies and some psychopaths who actively want to commit violent, highly visible crime. (It's unlikely that they will want to do it in spandex, though; that requires alien space magic.) There will not, however, be anything like the number that we see. To the extent that society collapsed in Worm -- however much that might be -- it wouldn't do that in reality, because there would be far fewer bad guys so not as much authorization.
Skinhead groups and other cults led by evil capes? Sure, right there with you. Random capes who just want to be criminals for money and power? No.
The society in Worm seems to be the way it is because Wildbow was working backward -- he wanted a particular setting and figured out how to justify it. Unfortunately, the justification required a series of things that all involved people not acting like normal people.
u/sanctaphrax [+20] (17 hours later)
Tattletale's situation is a bit odd. If Coil hadn't found and recruited her, she might well have gone for something like insider trading. But I found the story of how she ended up there believable before I knew anything about shards.
Grue needs money, the support of someone powerful (like Coil), and freedom. He doesn't trust the government, and his powers are not well-suited for business, so crime is really a good option for him.
Rachel was a homeless drifter who accidentally killed someone, and who was raised by a succession of abusers. Hard to return to ordinary society after that.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure Wildbow was working backward. But the way he did it seemed plausible to me. Early in the story, before shard stuff was on anyone's radar, it seemed plausible to me that society had been destabilized by parahumans to the point that "whatever, I'll take what I want with my powers" was a reasonable life plan.
I guess it's easy for me to accept society being destabilized. Our civilization isn't that competent/durable, if you ask me. And superpowers represent a pretty big shock to the system.
u/KateWalls [+7] (a day later)
One thing to keep in mind is that by 2011 in worm, there had already been over a decade of PRT propaganda and media campaigns about Hero vs Villain. They designed the system to work against "Rouges" (parahumans who use their powers legally but don't fight crime), it's only at the start of the story that the gov't starts to pivot and we see people like Canary and Parian. Before that, everyone who was born in 1990 or later would have grown up saturated with the idea of Hero vs Villain, and not necessarily in a way that deplored criminal activity. Outside Brockton Bay, Capes teams are viewed more like sports teams, a combination of MMA and NFL, perhaps.
So the fact that Taylor's first thoughts were of fighting crime and not joining the agricultural industry, is not surprising.
u/Frommerman [+4] (a day later)
All of Tattle's extra clock time was being used taking down Coil. You know, the guy who was literally an Elder Scrolls player character, totally unafraid of death because he had savestates? Robbing banks when it gives you the opportunity to take over a criminal organization that large makes perfect sense. Also, Coil mentions in his interlude that the stock markets are protected from thinker influence, and that he could only get around it because his power went at an angle nobody thought to protect against.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (2 days later)
All of Tattle's extra clock time was being used taking down Coil.
You want to take down a bad guy? Go to the police. Or, in this case, the PRT. They are hella better equipped to solve the problem. And yes, she was an arrogant person and didn't like the authorities and bad personal history and so on. Still. She's supposed to be smart -- get serious allies!
u/Frommerman [+7] (2 days later)
She wanted to take down Coil by replacing him. Which she did. This gave her all the wealth and more power than she could have gotten from gaming the stock market, if the stock market is even gamable in this setting due to the nebulous "protections" Coil knew about.
u/ThatDarnSJDoubleW [+6] (2 days later)
The PRT had tons of Coil moles, remember? Hell, he was one of their consultants and they didn't notice.
u/OrzBrain [+4] Fingers to dance, hands to catch, arms to pull (a day later)
Other superhero stuff doesn't make sense. Worm makes sense because of all these cheats. If it didn't have them it couldn't be a superhero story that makes any sense.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (a day later)
I would like to think there is at least one example of a superhero story that makes sense and does not require cheats.
u/HylianHal [+3] (2 days later)
I've no desire to download that over mobile just to find out what it is, and yet at the same time I must know.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (2 days later)
It's a superhero story where the protagonist is a rationalist and the 'superhero' part makes sense. Personally, I think it's utterly brilliant.
...which isn't surprising, since I'm the author. :> It's my in-progress book, The Change Storms: Induction
u/NinteenFortyFive [+8] (3 days later)
I'm the author
That ego though.
u/eaglejarl [+3] (3 days later)
There was a certain amount of humor there. I'll add the smiley for clarification.
u/NinteenFortyFive [+2] (3 days later)
but still dat ego.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (3 days later)
I regret hearing that you were offended by the joke.
u/NinteenFortyFive [+1] (4 days later)
Hurt dat ego?
u/eaglejarl [+1] (4 days later)
Nah. I just thought it was funny.
u/Fortyonekeks [+7] (3 days later)
"where [a human] is a rationalist"
I found the unrealistic part that makes no sense for you, no worries.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (3 days later)
I'm confused...you're hanging out on /r/rational, and you think there is no such thing as a person who is a rationalist? Maybe we're using different meanings -- I mean 'a person who has studied psychology, statistics, et al, and uses them to make her thinking as clear and correct as possible in order to best achieve her goals'. What do you mean by it?
u/Fortyonekeks [+4] (3 days later)
I mean less that there's no such thing as a rationalist and more that there's no such thing as a rational person. That's something I believe mostly because I've studied an awful lot of statistics and psychology, because I know that the last thing our brains are checking for and calculating in our decision making is what's rational, at least from our perspective, and I know that the vast majority of people don't even get so far as studying psychology/statistics/et al.
It's easy to say it's not rational for me to hate him because none of this... but no one can ignore their feelings as much as they'd like to, no one can ever make a totally rational choice.
What I'm trying to say is that I'm a distressed fanboy trying to find catharsis by arguing with strangers on the internet and the idea that fiction is bad because the characters don't act rationally seems just as absurd to me as fiction being bad because the characters don't act in line with exactly how you'd act. I read a poignant quote somewhere a few months ago about how we read stories because the characters don't act like we would--we know how we act, there's no surprise, no suspense there--the enjoyable part of reading is seeing characters making a choice that seems (or feels) rational (or right) from their perspective, which is still something totally different from what we'd do.
u/HylianHal [+1] (2 days later)
Thanks!
I'll check it out and, from one capefic writer to another, offer any concrit I may have for you.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (2 days later)
Thanks. Note that it's an original story, not a 'fic.
u/HylianHal [+2] (2 days later)
Of course! In my experience, wormfic and capefic are two distinct entities.
u/TimTravel [+6] (16 hours later)
This is a perfect example the following rule:
Mind magic is the enemy of character development.
That is, magic should have read-only access to mental states. It's much more compelling if someone does something because they chose to than because magic made them do it.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (17 hours later)
Hear, hear.
u/Takashoru [+1] (2 months later)
But think about all the character development the Master gets out of it...
u/FuguofAnotherWorld [+3] Roll the Dice on Fate (3 days later)
so I wish to heck I knew what it was that all of them see that I don't.
Basically, while it's not perfect it still does a whole hell of a lot better than almost any other story in the superhero genre of making sense. Turns out what a lot of smart people want to read is clever applications of superhero powers to defeat spandex wearing arseholes.
u/None [+70] (an hour later)
You should have to go that far down the cape list to find one Munchkin
You're also forgetting that Worm isn't the best universe for munchkinry, by design. There are a few that can do it, but mostly it's far more limited than it'd seem.
You know a good universe for munchkinry? Irredeemable. In that universe powers are natural and you can follow them to their conclusions. If someone can warp space, with enough know-how you can use that to crush planets and solar systems. If someone is pulling a whole bunch of Superman-style shenanigans, they're probably more than just a flying brick and can learn to go beyond that.
Worm powers are artificial, sentient and deliberately blackboxed and limited. That sort of 'explosion-munchkinry" is not happening. People can and do use their powers rationally (Purity picks fights where her power is strongest, Jack uses Hookwolf as a vehicle for his power) but that's mostly what you'll get. Notice that Skitter is incapable of achieving explosion-munchkinry on her own, and she would have been even more hamstrung if two unrestricted capes weren't around for her to coopt. She was stuck with vanilla competence for the longest time.
And this exists also on a societal level. New capes are coming, they have powers that you may not have accounted for, good luck taking over the world. The list of people that can do it is probably smaller than you imagine. Leet especially is someone touted too much. He is after all a natural trigger, and the whole point is that they can be threats, even massive ones,but they are there to provide conflict. He's not allowed to do anything and everything. In fact, there's absolutely no guarantee that his powers don't bottom out relatively early. That's the benefit of shards as an explanation for powers: arbitrariness is now fine.
Then you have Endbringers, who can and will kill anyone getting out of hand and are engineered to be superior to just about any cape or any group of capes.
Characters in Worm whose powers suffice to easily take over the world: Eidolon, Glaistig Ulaine, Panacea, Contessa, Bonesaw (instantly); and then Number Man, Dinah, Accord, Tattletale, Coil, Leet, Andrew Richter, Teacher, the Yang-ban... I've probably forgotten like half of them. I wonder if a prerequisite of a work generating an enormous quantity of fic is an enormous amount of untapped potential.
Some of these aren't even worth talking about tbh. "Taking over the world" is not really that important a goal for people in the know in Worm, for good reason. Why does Eidolon want to rule the world for twelve seconds (to someone with his potential lifespan)? Others just can't do it, Tattletale especially is a massive overestimation. As if the PRT doesn't have its own whole division of Thinkers.
Worm deliberately shapes the world such that all the powers that can't be contained are more concerned with other things, or outright dead. I think it's generally quite thorough to the point of being hamfisted on this.
Contessa is, imo, the biggest break-down point, which is ironic because she holds things together a bit (why did GU go to the Birdcage? Why isn't Bonesaw creating a zombie plague? Contessa is the final line of defense). She's so strong her limits aren't as good at justifying why she doesn't do certain things, unlike other characters.
Also, you should have trouble reading Worm fanfiction about Panacea because they generally suck. Certain characters make better canon characters than fanfiction characters. See also: Coil.
u/HeirToGallifrey [+57] Thinking inside the box (it's bigger there) (4 hours later)
Mannequin, too, is a good example of what happens when someone gets a little too rationalist with their power. Tinker tries to create post-scarcity utopia and Martian colony? Meet the Simurgh; she'll be driving you homicidally insane.
u/Transfuturist [+19] Carthago delenda est. (10 hours later)
Munchkinry is not well-suited to a world where your own effectiveness can be used to destroy everything you love. Between a rationalist non-rational (munchkin) story and a non-rationalist rational (realistic) story, I would pick the latter. EY either doesn't consider the realistic consequences of rationalist characters, or he simply doesn't acknowledge them because he prefers munchkin beatdowns.
u/Frommerman [+3] (3 days later)
Omniscience guy came with the drawback of destroying your mind after prolonged use, and causes Doormaker to become a blind deaf mute. I don't think you want someone with Contessa's power being as messed up as Doormaker.
u/Transfuturist [+2] Carthago delenda est. (3 days later)
You don't need to attach Contessa to Omniscience Guy, her power is global. You have a point, though.
I ship Omniscience Guy/Doormaker.
u/Frommerman [+6] (3 days later)
Her path was so long because her power doesn't work on precogs, strangers, endbringers, or Scion. Her power is absurd, but the fact that Mantellum or any other similar effect can turn her into a baseline human makes things tough. I would argue that the only reason she seems so powerful is because she avoided all conflicts where she wasn't directly needed, keeping her power and weaknesses out of public knowledge. Sure, she could take down any of the Triumvirate, but if she actually tried to replace them she would be killed within weeks, either in an endbringer attack or by someone with a grudge and a high stranger class.
u/Transfuturist [+3] Carthago delenda est. (3 days later)
It would be interesting if Contessa's power changed her like The Whispering Earring does to others.
u/Takashoru [+1] (2 months later)
Clairvoyant, please.
u/None [+3] (12 hours later)
What else would they have used the last spoiler for? Contessa likely duplicated a lot of its information gathering ability because of the inherent nature of her power and they could have used it for that without saying g anyway.
Besides, it didn't work on the final threat, since it explicitly blocked the places it would need to view.
Besides, I think you underestimate the strategic value of the service it provided.
u/Transfuturist [+5] Carthago delenda est. (13 hours later)
u/None [+10] (13 hours later)
Ah. Your first post implied
u/Running_Ostrich [+2] (17 hours later)
[Spoilers for the ending of Worm](#s Scion could have been defeated without any of them. Taylor's key insight was that her way didn't work - she couldn't win by overpowering Scion because he had PtV auto-trigger whenever he was in danger. They won by "bullying" Scion into not caring enough to follow the PtV. The key players were Oliver (made Scion depressed enough to not PtV), Flechette (Open to Scion's dimension), and Tinkers (Gun to destroy Scion's body). All 3 of these parts are really interchangeable with capes who could do similar things too.)
u/MugaSofer [+2] (2 months later)
FYI, you have to put spoiler text in quotes or they don't work.
u/OrzBrain [+9] Fingers to dance, hands to catch, arms to pull (a day later)
You're also forgetting that Worm isn't the best universe for munchkinry, by design. There are a few that can do it, but mostly it's far more limited than it'd seem.
I think you're missing the point.
His HolynessYodkowsky is praising Wildbow for seeing the need to add all these anti-munchkin defenses in order to make a more realistic setting where everyone shouldn't have already taken over the world. And complaining about fan fiction which forgets this.
u/Quillwraith [+34] Red King Consolidated (3 hours later)
SPOILERS for Worm. (It's almost impossible to discuss without them.)
I don't have facebook, so I can't reply to EY directly, but:
Firstly, the shards are deliberately given to people who won't destabilize the cycle. Secondly, shards influence their humans to cause conflict. Thirdly, most of these can't easily take over the world because the others with equally broken powers would stop them. Fourth, the Endbringers target anyone who's doing too well at fixing things. Fifth, most of the Capes mentioned aren't doing as badly as all that:
The Number Man, Accord, Contessa and Dinah are already doing what's most important - using their Thinker powers to plan how to save the world.
Coil is taking over a city, but chooses to be cautious that is takes a long time. Tattletale did end up one of the most important people in said city.
Teacher was clearly working on taking over the world, and was reasonably clever at the attempt, but it didn't work out.
Richter - well, he was effective enough to get targeted by Leviathan. Who's to say he wouldn't have tried to fix things if he'd had the chance? Tinkers need time to work.
You overestimate Leet. When they say he can build anything, they do not mean it literally, and WoG is that by the time he figured out his limitation, he'd already burned out a lot of the best tech he could make.
Also, there is Panacea fanfic in which she does that sort of thing. I don't actually find it particularly enjoyable to read after the first few chapters.
Edits: Added non-recommendation to my mention of Amelia. Fixed where I said Simurgh had killed Richter - it was Leviathan. Added futile spoiler warning.
u/Transfuturist [+5] Carthago delenda est. (10 hours later)
In Amelia, doesn't it specifically break a canon constraint on Amy's power? I thought she couldn't use her power on herself. Did she make retrovirus bullshit out of the bacteria on her skin, or what?
u/sephlington [+12] (12 hours later)
She still can't. The initial scenes are her munchkining her powers by making and remote-controlling a custom-made organism that looks like her. But it was deliberate to make it look like she'd broken that limit.
u/Transfuturist [+1] Carthago delenda est. (12 hours later)
Thank you for answering.
u/turbinicarpus [+3] (11 hours later)
No, it doesn't break that canon constraint. I don't want to spoil it, but if you read past past the first chapter or two, all shall be explained.
u/Transfuturist [+2] Carthago delenda est. (12 hours later)
I guess I'm never getting the explanation, then, because I can't stand even the first chapter.
u/turbinicarpus [+1] (12 hours later)
That's your decision. My work here (of ensuring that the readers on this thread know that that constraint isn't broken) is done.
u/euthanatos [+24] (4 hours later)
I largely agree with the point about Panacea, but I don't think you can really claim that a dozen characters could each 'easily take over the world'. Doesn't the existence of the other characters essentially mean that it wouldn't actually be that easy?
u/Transfuturist [+13] Carthago delenda est. (10 hours later)
Yes. :P EY is selecting for munchkin beatdowns, not rational or rationalist fics.
u/MugaSofer [+23] (12 hours later)
Ok, so Richter, Accord, and Bonesaw explicitly have (and spend much of the story working to overcome - well, substitute Dragon for Richter) shard-induced psychological limitations.
Panacea's whole character is devoted to delivering the moral that an absurdly broken power is no use if you're a twit; so yeah, obviously she could be a god if she wasn't a twit. (For what it's worth, I think she's unrealistically bad at using her power, but then I also subscribe to the theory that her Shard was messing with her.)
Number Man and Countessa basically do rule the world. Tattletale, the Yangban, and Teacher explicitly made their own bids for power; I think it's reasonably clear that their powers aren't that great, especially when you take into consideration that there are other people with powers out there opposing attempts to take over the world.
Leets power is ... variable in strength.
Eidolon, Glastig and Dinah believe, correctly or incorrectly, that there are bigger fish to fry than ruling the world.
I don't know, I was actually quite impressed by the levels of thought displayed in Worm. Not everyone is a "munchkin", exactly, but they do seem to have devoted a level of thought to their ability that you'd expect from someone whose day job is using that power.
u/EliezerYudkowsky [+40] Godric Gryffindor (15 hours later)
To be clear, I wasn't criticizing Wildbow. The original Worm does what it sets out to do as well as any story possibly could - it's trying (successfully) to be the Superhero Story To End All Superhero Stories, the category killer for its category, that doesn't let you ever look at superhero stories the same way again; the same thing I set out to do with HPMOR and Harry Potter fanfiction. Wildbow is rationalizing and therefore of necessity preserving every aspect of traditional superhero stories, including Reed Richards Is Useless, excusing them and lawfulizing them as hard as he possibly can (and no harder). Even so the power balance in Worm is ludicrous but there's no way a human-level author could possibly avert that, given that they were trying to rationalize something akin to the Marvel or DC multiverse to start with; you just can't have economic balance or the weakest inexploitability given that many different superhero-level powers. Wildbow has thrown on at least four layers of inhibitors to try to rationalize why his Earth goes on spinning despite that, and that's the most he can possibly do without changing the nature of his universe.
What makes the voices start shrieking in my head is when I read a fanfic that's unaware of this, and depicts happy cheerful sane Amy not taking over the world (nor being attacked by the Simurgh or blocked by Contessa).
(Have read Amelia, check.)
u/None [+13] (20 hours later)
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u/None [+14] (a day later)
I disagree. I think seeing things from Taylor's perspective leads one to buy more into her character as the reason for victory.
Pretty sure she wasn't the only person doing this. In fact, her decisions in many cases didn't really help because the people who knew better weren't jumping in for a reason.
In fact,in many ways she did just really bumble about. The whole "go to jail" thing is a prime example, a complete miscalculation based on what information she did have but she doesn't see it because she wants to be a martyr.
Taylor won because Wildbow stacked the deck in such a way as to help her win while rendering all her rivals for the victory ineffectual. Attributing it to dispositional factors and leaving out the situational ones is no bueno. And I don't just mean that on a Doylist level; see how that fight went, inside the story.
Contessa or Eidolon don't have less willpower than Taylor, they don't care less about the Earth than Taylor. She doesn't win because she conceived of a sacrifice they couldn't imagine. There is no level of brutality or hardheadedness that Taylor could discover and sink to where she wouldn't already see the evidence of Cauldron's passing.
She won precisely because 1- they failed and 2- they can't do as she does (and not because they're dumb or weak either). Eidolon going Khepri is an extinction-event of its own, and it never seemed necessary or possible...until it was too late and he had already lost, precisely because he is stronger etc. (Scion never felt a similar need to just precog-kill Taylor, though he did fuck with her with it) . Not to mention that Wildbow sets up a situation where necessary bits of information are only available to Taylor once that has already happened.
Maybe, on a Doylist level, that was what Wildbow was going for (self-sacrifice is worth more than sacrificing others) but I'll take a harsher stance than usual and say that he just failed, completely.
u/madcatlady [+20] (4 hours later)
I like that this is an imperfect world like that. It is crushingly realistic in its examination of flaws.
In a munchkin world, no one has ADD or ennui or a fat ass and a box set of tv shows.
u/aeschenkarnos [+33] (4 hours later)
Or spends their time messing about writing fanfiction and thinking about the vanishingly unlikely consequences of an AI paradigm that may not even eventuate, instead of solving actual, pressing, extant problems.
u/None [+29] (5 hours later)
A wave of heat washed over Halifax, charging the sky. It wasn't Mont Blanc, or a nuclear warhead. No, that burn was just that good.
u/aeschenkarnos [+7] (14 hours later)
Eh, EY is quite self-aware, he knows that his behavior is non-optimal. I expect his advocacy of rationalism is aspirational, not prescriptive. Just because a goal is inherently unachievable doesn't make it useless to pursue; striving towards that goal can produce enormous benefit. I appreciate that he spends his time doing what he does, it benefits the world quite well enough. I'm just making a joke that's there to be made.
u/None [+36] (5 hours later)
I think Mr. Yudkowsky is assuming that his own terminal values are the hidden, but extant desires of every human on Earth, and it's only through their own failure to realize their own power that they fail to remake the world in their image like a cohort of questing demigods. It's entirely possible that this whole business of being a Rational Overlord of the World really isn't what a lot of people want.
u/None [+12] (7 hours later)
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u/None [+10] (9 hours later)
He did once boast in a LW comment that he made Quirrellmort out of his own brain.
And he said it like that was a good thing.
u/eaglejarl [+10] (14 hours later)
He did once boast in a LW comment that he made Quirrellmort out of his own brain. And he said it like that was a good thing.
He said rather more than that.
Quoth Eliezer Yudkowsky about himself:
"This is why Eliezer Yudkowsky can’t take over the world just by promoting his simulation of Professor Quirrell to be in charge of his brain, as several earnest people have proposed to me. Look, I don’t mean to sound immodest here, but that would in fact be a huge step down for me. The model I use to generate Professor Quirrell doesn’t even come close to invoking all of my technique to power him."
u/None [+2] (14 hours later)
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u/Valkurich [+20] (a day later)
In some other stuff he wrote, he made it pretty clear that HPMOR takes place in a universe where complicated plans are much more likely to work than in the real world. He doesn't think he could take over the world if he wanted to, he just thinks that a Quirrel who made the same choices he would would be more able to take over the HPMOR world. As a matter of fact, that point is made in the paragraph directly before the one quoted. He lives in a world much harder to optimize than the one Quirrel lives in.
Imagine that HPMOR was instead a story about a power struggle in a kingdom of two foot tall gnomes that grant power to the person with the most martial prowess. Quirrel is a giant, at four feet tall. Eliezer comments that if Quirrel were as large as him, he would have an easier time of it. However, Eliezer is very aware of the fact that the real world isn't populated entirely by two foot tall gnomes who grant political power to the person most capable of beating them up, so of course he can't seize power in the real world simply by virtue of being taller than Quirrel.
Quirrel exists in a world with different constraints that the one Eliezer lives in. The fact that Eliezer believes he would have advantages over Quirrel in that other environment does not mean he also believes he could do what Quirrel does in that other environment in our world. Eliezer selectively crippled Quirrel's ability to think, in order to prevent him from being too gamebreaking. So, a non crippled version of Quirrel would necessarily be more intelligent than the actual Quirrel, and Eliezer can't be less intelligent than a fictional person who exists entirely in his head, as Quirrel can't think up a clever plan or solution that Eliezer couldn't also think up.
In summary, Eliezer is correct when he says he is smarter than Quirrel. He actually expressly states that that fact doesn't mean he could do the sorts of thing that Quirrel can. You are attributing to him a belief he doesn't hold. There is actually a reason why being as smart as Quirrel doesn't mean he could take over this universe as easily as Quirrel could take over his, intelligence goes farther in the HPMOR world. And Eliezer knows that.
Sorry if this seems a little combative, I just really don't like it when people get ridiculed for beliefs they don't hold. It's also possible I drastically misread the tone of your comment, in which case I apologize.
u/None [+1] (a day later)
Ok, so I hadn't read the whole blog entry over again. Also, again, I've seen him make this boast without that mitigating context.
So, umm, look, the guy's cool, but sometimes he also says things that need to be taken down a peg. Otherwise phyg happens and communication skills degrade.
And also, it was genuinely pretty funny.
u/OrzBrain [+1] Fingers to dance, hands to catch, arms to pull (2 days later)
Honestly, if Eliezer was that ever-so-fucking-clever, he wouldn't have any technical work left to do, and the world would already be firmly optimized. He should really try boasting about actual accomplishments.
Blasphemy! For this affront you shall be caught in the basalisk's eye in the future (when someone gets around to building it) and your simulations shall be tortured for all eternity in a lake of fire which gives no light and does not consume, but causes only PAIN! Cast out the heretic! For your insults to
His HolinessHis MagnificenceHis Gorgeous Sweet Smelling ScrumptiousnessnessnessEliezer Yudkowsky all the matter in the universe will now have to be converted into computronium devoted entirely to the task of running near infinite simulations of you IN AGONY! (Someone get on building that paperclip basilisk already.) Think of the kittens!
u/None [+2] (2 days later)
Remind me to flair you as an Inquisitor of the Ordo Hereticus.
u/None [+5] (10 hours later)
I thought he said that Q was based on the other guy there, Robin something.
u/None [+3] (10 hours later)
The only direct description I've ever heard is that "Michael Vassar is Professor Quirrell with a phoenix on his shoulder".
And I just meant he boasted that he contains Professor Quirrell, rather than that Professor Quirrell's personality is based on Eliezer's (when it's clearly not).
u/None [+18] (11 hours later)
Well, he clearly does contain Quirrell. He wrote him, after all. What he doesn't contain are the things that made Quirrell successful, namely, a story where there was always information available and things made sense, where that simulated iteration of Quirrel-conciousness was plugged into a subconcious model of the world he lived in, the HPMoR world, with access to data front-end rationalized after the fact - and where that model was able to interact with things multiple times, always doing the thing that wasn't stupid and consuming massive amounts of processing power spread over multiple iterations until it arrived at the best possible plan. The world works according to rational principles, sure, but it also contains several orders of magnitude more complexity than the setting Eliezer imagined and pitted Harry against. In the real world, you can get hit by a bus, die without meaning or cleverness, and be remembered with a funeral, a grave, and a brief but impassioned obituary. In the real world, people make mistakes.
u/None [-3] (13 hours later)
Yes, that's more-or-less why the attempt to use, "I contain Quirrell" as a badass boast fell flat.
u/EliezerYudkowsky [+7] Godric Gryffindor (3 days later)
It wasn't a badass boast. It was Vinge's Principle. You've been corrected on this point multiple times. Find some other point to make your display of independence.
u/None [+1] (3 days later)
What's Vinge's Principle?
u/EliezerYudkowsky [+4] Godric Gryffindor (3 days later)
u/None [+1] (3 days later)
Edit: fuck fucking mobile.
Ok, I'm going to read that. However, statement first: 75% of the time that I make what looks like a "display of independence", it's because I actually just don't keep up with LW things, especially people's personal blogs, as often or in as much detail as they or I would like. Of the remaining 25%, 15 percentage points are actual differences of opinion that could be cashed out given enough time and care, eventually.
And 10 percentage points is just being a dick on the internet for the various reasons people do that.
In real life, the disagreements are kept quiet whenever it comes to anything that actually matters, on grounds that just because I think, for instance, that FAI is reasonably probable (viz: achievable by human effort) and hard takeoffs are less so, doesn't mean those estimates are into Mugging territory where I want anyone to actually disregard potential takeoff scenarios or difficulties where doing so could actually cause real damage.
So yeah.
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+9] Mouse Army (7 hours later)
Y'know, most people are- via revealed preference- unhappy with their friends and relatives dying, and a lot of people are unhappy in their jobs, and a lot of people are unhappy with the amount of wealth they have.
Do you dispute any of this?
So I'd say Mr. Yudkowsky is justified in assuming at least those three points as being pretty much universal.
u/None [+17] (9 hours later)
Y'know, most people are- via revealed preference- unhappy with their friends and relatives dying, and a lot of people are unhappy in their jobs, and a lot of people are unhappy with the amount of wealth they have.
Firstly: revealed preferences are almost always irrational, reflectively non-coherent "preferences". Secondly: all real agents are boundedly rational. Just because you, with your budget constraints and information, can think of something they can do that is much greater than what they actually do, doesn't mean they can think of it, or that it lies within their budget constraints and information.
This is why we have education instead of "Everyone just be smart now!".
And finally, yes, a lot of people don't want to be overlords, or even particularly (socially) powerful, and many actually feel an active discomfort with (social) power, or often with a broad class of social interactions.
u/Transfuturist [+3] Carthago delenda est. (10 hours later)
Not to mention that we are also reinforcement learners, and a large part of education is training our own behavior to more desirable states.
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+2] Mouse Army (9 hours later)
Revealed preferences: "almost always" except in the case of mortality. Many people say "I dont want to live forever" "death is good" but when questioned if they want their loved ones to die they deny.
Of course most people dont wont be "overlord" of any kind! And we dont want the people who want to be that to be in that position of power.
The whole "rational overlord of the world" is a really ugly/meant-to-be-funny term for "world optimisation". World optimisation would not be necessary if a certain number of topics were already adequately adressed.
u/injygo [+3] (16 hours later)
I'd rather say that "world optimization" is a euphemism for "rational overlord of the world". Not every supposed optimization is good.
u/NotAHeroYet [+2] City of Angles Municipal Government (16 hours later)
I assumed it's rational head administrator- which you can be without being an overlord- just by being amazingly useful to everyone.
u/aeschenkarnos [+6] (14 hours later)
It's entirely possible that this whole business of being a Rational Overlord of the World really isn't what a lot of people want.
Not only that, they don't want the world to have a Rational Overlord. It'd interfere with their irrational plans, like falling in love, chasing unachievable goals, pursuing social status, taking vengeance for perceived wrongs, feeling like a member of a religious community, etc etc.
u/Dead_Atheist [+10] Chaos Legion (23 hours later)
Why so many people think love or faling in love is irrational? Some people are doing it wrong, of course, but that doesn't mean love always is stupid.
u/mcherm [-1] (23 hours later)
"Irrational" does not mean "stupid". Nearly everyone I gave read on the subject (as well as my own subjective experience) confirms that the beginning, the act of " falling in love" is characterized by significant, obsessive irrationality.
u/Dead_Atheist [+6] Chaos Legion (a day later)
If you are talking about body reaction - that's just unfortunate side effect, and benefits of love usually outweigh it. So plan to fall in love isn't irrational.
If they don't outweigh, that's the case of doing it wrong.
Every time I use words "rational" or "logic", first response (with one exception) is always "So, you are soulless emotionless robot without ability to love?". Sick of that.
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+9] Mouse Army (38 minutes later)
One could make the point that Bill Gates is at least trying to life up to potential- but I vaguely remember that Eliezer is extremely disappointed with how Bill+Melinda Gates Foundation is going on about the whole "safe the poor" buisness.
u/Uncaffeinated [+8] (7 hours later)
I'd say Sergey Brinn counts too. Self driving cars anyone?
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+9] Mouse Army (7 hours later)
I'd say the whole SENS thing even more than self driving cars. Theres already serious money in selfdriving cars, but google funding Calico with ... 1.5 billion is much more important.
u/aeschenkarnos [+3] (14 hours later)
I'd say the whole SENS thing even more than self driving cars.
This^10 . Self-driving cars inherently depend upon an AI that can take general environmental data as input and then undertake activity towards a purpose. That is the equivalent of a general computation device, as much more useful than self-driving cars, as a general purpose computer is more useful than a digital watch.
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+6] Mouse Army (23 hours later)
Ah, I think you are a tad (a few orders of magnitude) overoptimistic. Certainly current self-driving cars are not anywhere near general artifical intelligence.
u/sanctaphrax [+1] (7 days later)
No, but I don't think there's any chance of getting to general AI without going through self-driving cars.
Also, SENS looks like a giant waste of money to me.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+4] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (an hour later)
Given how Bill Gates made his fortune, I'm glad he's given up trying to rule the world. He did more than enough damage already.
u/Farmerbob1 [+18] Level 1 author (8 hours later)
Damage? By providing a nearly-universal operating system and suite of tools that allow companies, governments, and individuals around the world to work together?
Sure, they were too aggressive at times. And yes, a lot of the products have warts. Big ones. But if you look beyond the ugliness at the surface, Windows, Internet Explorer, and the Microsoft Office suite have been incredibly potent as the world moved into the electronic age.
For decades, Apple was too tied up in elitism, exclusive hardware, and the "You only need one way to do it. Our way." mentality to be an effective competitor in the business world.
u/None [+13] (9 hours later)
Sure, they were too aggressive at times. And yes, a lot of the products have warts. Big ones. But if you look beyond the ugliness at the surface, Windows, Internet Explorer, and the Microsoft Office suite have been incredibly potent as the world moved into the electronic age.
You're giving too much credit. There were other operating systems, including other proprietary, for-profit operating systems.
If I went back in time and assassinated baby Bill Gates, or convinced him never to drop out of Harvard, then the world would still have undergone the "PC Revolution", and probably with roughly equivalent speed.
He had a first-monopolist's advantage. Yay for him. That doesn't mean he isn't counterfactually replaceable.
EDIT: Seriously, BeOS was a thing, IBM DOS was a thing, Linux is still a thing, proprietary Unix was and is a thing, VMS was the direct ancestor of Windows NT and was a thing...
u/ehrbar [+2] (7 days later)
Bill Gates was incredibly important in the early personal computer world, first as the co-author (with Allen) of BASIC for the MITS Altair 8800, and then in the early expansion stage when Microsoft sold the standard BASIC for not just the whole Altair-based S-100 ecosystem, but the TRS-80 ("Level II Basic"), Apple II series ("Applesoft Basic"), Commodore machines, and the IBM PC.
Assassinate the baby Gates, and you butterfly the first half-decade of the personal computer all out of recognition, and who knows what then happens. A world that's a lot more Datapoint 2200 and a lot less Homebrew Computer Club could have a lot of knock-on effects on the "home computer" category and the adoption of computers in K-12 education, and subsequently, for example, on uptake of the Internet in the home.
u/Transfuturist [+2] Carthago delenda est. (10 hours later)
Unfortunately, baby Bill Gates would be promptly replaced with some other first-mover monopolist. Corporations...
The BeOS platform is still a thing, it's just that nobody uses it anymore.
u/Kuratius [+1] (a day later)
Wrong link.
u/Transfuturist [+1] Carthago delenda est. (a day later)
Fuck. That's what I get for not waiting for the page to load.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+12] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (8 hours later)
By creating a monoculture that requires orders of magnitude greater resources to perform the same tasks than the already existing nearly-universal API that he ended up having to emulate to succeed, that's harder to develop reliable software for than the competition, that has single-handedly created a rich and vibrant viral ecosystem by blurring the lines between components, and that, it turns out, is rarely required for companies, governments, and individuals to work together.
Actually, what most makes that possible is common APIs on a variety of operating systems on a network that he initially opposed. Windows adoption of internet protocols was slow and reluctant - Gates was all about local private LANs running proprietary protocols (NetBIOS, LAN Manager) linked together via online services (Microsoft Network) using telecom style protocols. If he'd been successful there, there would be no Reddit for us to be having this discussion on.
Apple? What does Apple have to do with it? Apple only became relevant after they gave up THEIR proprietary operating system and protocols and adopted an open-source based platform.
u/Transfuturist [+3] Carthago delenda est. (11 hours later)
open-source based platform
Apple is still harmful as long as the platforms themselves remain non-open. And Microsoft is closing off their platforms ever so slowly... Who needs desktop, am I right?
u/ArgentStonecutter [+2] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (11 hours later)
It's certainly possible that Apple will go mad, yes, but the point is that it took open systems to make them relevant. Microsoft uses open systems a lot more widely than is generally known, they've had a full UNIX implementation available since about 2000 and included in their enterprise platforms by default since Windows 7... you just have to know where to enable it.
People give Microsoft credit for all kinds of things they opposed and only reluctantly embraced. The current Microsoft ecosystem happened despite their best efforts, and the equivalent would have happened with or without them... and it would be more efficient and cost effective without their monopoly.
u/Farmerbob1 [+1] Level 1 author (17 hours later)
Microsoft, as a corporation, had to make an income for it's employees and stockholders. Sure, Mr. Gates was making money hand over fist too, but it seems rational to me to support the people who have invested in, or work for, your company. You can't do that without income. In every emerging market, there are always cutthroat tactics. Some examples: Railways. Automobiles. VCR's. Video cards. That was five seconds of brainstorming. I'm sure you can come up with a bunch on your own.
For a business to survive the cutthroat stage in a new industry, they have to find a niche, claim it, and defend it. Gates / Microsoft was very aggressive in doing this. Too aggressive in many cases.
In the end, there are two things that are forefront in my mind when considering Microsoft:
Failed companies to not innovate. Reluctantly embracing something is still embracing it.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+1] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (23 hours later)
Oh. You're now claiming that they are to be applauded simply for being "last man standing". Which is far from the original claim that I'm disputing... that they have been somehow responsible for the advances that have happened in spite of them.
u/Farmerbob1 [+1] Level 1 author (a day later)
I am not applauding Microsoft credit for having ideas. I give them credit for implementing them, even if the implementation was cludgy and reluctant.
The environment that Microsoft developed in was a very scary environment, business-wise. One mistake or missed opportunity early on, and Microsoft might not exist today, for better, or worse.
Very few companies are true innovators, but at the same time, most companies prefer to use their own ideas when they are of near-equivalent perceived value of other ideas. Especially when patents and money are involved. Microsoft is no exception.
The fact that Microsoft chose to reluctantly absorb outside practices by purchasing companies, taking open source ideas, and even engaging in shady bullshit is one reason why they are as big as they are. They are one of the 'last men standing' because they were willing to internalize enough outside ideas to remain relevant.
It might not be pretty, and you and I would have almost certainly done it differently, but we weren't in charge. It's very possible that without Microsoft, the PC boom would have been much slower to take off. Businesses might have hesitated longer before adopting computers enthusiastically. Too many choices tends to frighten some people. A common architecture allowed the manufacturing world to build computer components for x86 machines much more cheaply.
Does that mean that something special might have been lost along the way? Yes. Undoubtedly. I liked Netscape.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+1] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (a day later)
I am specifically pointing at:
Damage? By providing a nearly-universal operating system and suite of tools that allow companies, governments, and individuals around the world to work together?
They didn't do that.
u/Farmerbob1 [+1] Level 1 author (a day later)
I'm afraid that I don't understand how it is that you can say they didn't do exactly that. Maybe I'm misunderstanding something? Look at the desktop/laptop and web client percentage shares.
Phones and tablets are a different story, but powerful handheld computers are still an emerging market.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+2] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (a day later)
The numbers just say "it's popular". It doesn't say it's what lets people work together.
And what mechanisms do people generally use to collaborate? Email & web, even intranet is more HTTP access than CIFS these days. That's none of it Windows specific. The Windows specific parts are the content, and the only Windows based application that's best of class is Excel... and you don't need Excel to take part in that collaboration. Word and Power Point are horrible. The HTML editing part of Netscape Composer (the extended version of Navigator) is a far better editor and supported collaboration better than Word.
Collaboration happens despite Windows.
The "near universal operating system" is the Internet.
u/Farmerbob1 [+1] Level 1 author (a day later)
Wall Of Text warning.
I think we're talking past each other here. You are talking about individual apps and components. I am talking about the bigger picture - the actual presence of non-research machines in places of business and government.
Windows consolidated the hardware market into a (mostly) common architecture. Apple had a small market share. At about the same time that Windows 3.x emerged, it was fairly clear that Microsoft was building a stable platform, and that hardware manufacturers were falling into a common architecture.
This made computers FAR less scary to businesses and government for everyday operations. As people who were making purchasing and staffing decisions saw the computer software and hardware markets consolidating, they recognized that there was less risk that what they bought today would be useless tomorrow. As more and more software was designed to operate in the Windows environment, there was less concern about a new company creating a better program on a different operating system.
Without that quickly-growing market of companies and governments buying computers because they were looking like good investments instead of risky, strange toys, there would have been far less collaboration, because there would have simply been far fewer computers. That said, computerized collaboration would certainly have happened anyway, but I'm confident it would have happened much more slowly without Microsoft, or some other company dominating the market like Microsoft did.
You need to remember that open source software is something that geeks like. Most people who do not self-identify as a computer geek don't want anything to do with open source software. Time-consuming learning curves and fiddly code settings are not attractive.
Now, as you say, the internet is growing to become more important for day-to-day operations. I agree 100% with this part of what you are saying. For some people and businesses, the hardware in their hands is nothing more than a bridge to the hardware on the internet. We would have gotten here without Microsoft, eventually, I think, but it would have been a much longer and more painful path.
Bear with me here for a minute, I'm leading up to something. I am 44. Barely old enough to remember a world without personal computers. I used Apple IIE's in my last year of elementary school, and went to college with an Apple IIC. I can remember when hard drives were first implemented. I remember being amazed by the huge amount of data I could put on a 3.5" floppy.
I can also remember when all groceries had paper tags on them, cashiers keyed everything in by hand, and fast food restaurants were strictly cash. Businesses did NOT want early computers for everyday use. Mechanical typewriters were replaced with electronic typewriters. Mechanical cash registers were swapped with electronic cash registers. Computers existed in those days that could easily emulate both machines, but they were scary, newfangled things.
Seriously, businesses and governments were scared of computers back then, for everyday use. They were complex, confusing, and everything about them seemed to change yearly, if not more often. Microsoft brought stability, even if they broke a lot of other things, and that's what businesses and governments want. Stability. It's hard to generate a five-year plan, when you can't predict your computer hardware and software expenses reliably.
Some businesses and governments stayed scared of computers for a long time. Examples:
Waffle House, a very large chain of restaurants that has been around for many decades, only started taking card payments about ten years ago. They only started using an electronic point of sale system about four years ago.
Clayton County Georgia Department of Motor Vehicles only started taking cards for registration payments five years ago. The Clayton County landfill is still cash-only when I take my trash there.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+1] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (a day later)
Windows consolidated the hardware market into a (mostly) common architecture. Apple had a small market share.
People keep talking about "Windows versus Apple". Apple wasn't even in the picture until the late '90s. Mac OS was a ghetto.
If you're talking about Apple II, then that was back when the big debate wasn't Mac versus Windows, it was MS-DOS vs CP/M... or even TRS-DOS and other proprietary CP/M knockoffs versus CP/M. By the time Windows was a viable platform the Apple II was dead.
Seriously, you're not anywhere near the same page as the stuff I'm talking about.
We would have gotten here without Microsoft, eventually, I think, but it would have been a much longer and more painful path.
Seriously, Microsoft slowed things down. They basically killed whole product lines getting Office everywhere, and most of those were already interoperable and better products.
u/Farmerbob1 [+1] Level 1 author (a day later)
People keep talking about "Windows versus Apple". Apple wasn't even in the picture until the late '90s. Mac OS was a ghetto.
Sorry, I meant Microsoft, not Windows. Microsoft and Apple were fighting for market share long before Windows existed. I was on the Apple side until I got a PC with MS-DOS 3.11 to replace my aging Apple IIc.
And you are correct, we are not on the same page here. I'm talking about worldwide computing infrastructure and the resulting attractiveness to businesses and governments which Microsoft helped to generate while it was reducing it's competition. You are talking about individual applications and components.
The fact that they killed off whole product lines was part of the reason for the overall growth of the computing industry in business and government. Remember that business and government generally do NOT appreciate lots of options, because that means they have to constantly evaluate all the possibilities.
When offered too many different plausible options in emerging tech, businesses and governments will sit tight and wait for the mergers and patent battles to start settling themselves before making a decision.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+2] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (a day later)
Forget about Apple. Really. Apple was never a competitor in business computing. It wasn't Apple versus MS-DOS, it was CP/M versus MS-DOS.
So long as you have Apple in the equation you're completely distracted by irrelevancies.
The fact that they killed off whole product lines was part of the reason for the overall growth of the computing industry in business and government.
Business did NOT want to go with individual personal computers on individual user's desks. It was more expensive to support, it was more expensive to buy even with the relatively higher cost of individual shared computers. And it made collaboration harder.
Virtually every real alternative to Windows (again, Apple wasn't ever in the race) was better. If pretty much any other player had won, everyone would have been better off. Comparing universes in which Microsoft won and those in which any open business platform won, the non-Microsoft universe would be richer and have better tools on cheaper hardware. Only the IBM Mainframe Dystopia would have been worse.
u/aeschenkarnos [+8] (14 hours later)
Gate's maximalist attitude to copyright (cf Open Letter to Hobbyists, 1976) carried along with his success has done enormous damage to the general purpose computation movement. If Stallman had pre-dated Gates, and his attitude of open-source, peer-reviewed, user-controlled software had prevailed over the MPAA and RIAA earlier (rather than Gates and to a lesser extent Jobs making common cause with them), I suspect that we would have advanced general computation by at least 10 years.
The Jobs/Wozniak dynamic could have played out differently too; Wozniak, like most highly creative hacker types, was not interested in preventing other people from doing what he did. Quite the opposite, the early Apple computers were extremely well documented. Wozniak understood that creativity is stimulated, not held back, by sharing. He wanted to see what other people did with his devices, in order to build better devices himself.
Copyright rewards firstness not bestness. It enforces a mindset of scarcity and criminalizes a mindset of abundance.
u/eaglejarl [+6] (17 hours later)
and his [Stallman's] attitude of open-source, peer-reviewed, user-controlled software had prevailed over the MPAA and RIAA earlier
Stallman was never about open-source. In fact, he hates the word. Stallman has always been about free software, which has largely the same goal but isn't willing to compromise at all, or to indulge in marketing. Open source is a marketing campaign for free software, and it wasn't until that marketing started that free software actually made a difference in the mainstream.
Stallman is a zealot. A man with a truly admirable dream and the courage to put it forward, a great motivator who gathered a core group of very talented people and created a lot of great software, and many other positive things...but always and finally a zealot. Zealots don't change the world, the people who take their ideas and make them palatable do.
u/aeschenkarnos [+3] (17 hours later)
Zealots don't change the world, the people who take their ideas and make them palatable do.
But those people wouldn't have ever done that without the zealot to supply the ideas to them.
u/eaglejarl [+3] (18 hours later)
Agreed. That was implied.
u/aeschenkarnos [+1] (20 hours later)
Not to nitpick, however you did say "zealots don't change the world", and I believe that they do change the world, in this way, through other people.
Even by being wrong a zealot can change the world, if their error causes opposition to their ideas to become coherent and organized.
I think there's a big difference between "change the world" and "cause their vision to become reality exactly as they wanted".
u/ArgentStonecutter [+1] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (a day later)
The world was already changing. Stallman got in front of a movement that already existed and then pretended he created it.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+1] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (a day later)
Stallman was never about open-source. In fact, he hates the word. Stallman has always been about free software, which has largely the same goal but isn't willing to compromise at all, or to indulge in marketing.
Stallman gets way more credit than he deserves, not just because it's other people who did the work, but also because the process he's given credit for was already happening before he had his hissy fit about someone releasing a proprietary version of Emacs.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (a day later)
I thought his hissy fit was about someone not releasing a printer driver?
I mean, taking over the software world (admittedly, second hand) because you weren't allowed to check the printer remotely? That's some serious Dark Lord stuff, that is.
u/eaglejarl [+3] (14 hours later)
As a decades-long Mac and Unix user, it pains me to say this:
sigh Have an upvote.