scrape_r_rational/data/cache2/5oypoh.md

## Crystal Mentality is out!!! [RT][HSF]

* Author: u/RationalityRules *
* URL: https://www.amazon.com/Crystal-Mentality-Trillogy-Book-ebook/dp/B01N7TK5EF/
* Score: 56

* Created: 2017-01-19T19:35:47

### Post:

[Link to content](https://www.amazon.com/Crystal-Mentality-Trillogy-Book-ebook/dp/B01N7TK5EF/)

### Comments:

> **u/xamueljones** [+15]  *My arch-enemy is entropy* (an hour later)
> 
> For anyone who is wondering about the website, only the first book is free to read. Guy needs to make money somehow!
> 
> Just to let people know, Amazon only provides a mobi format for $9.99, while for a one cent higher price on Gumroad ($10) you can get [Crystal Mentality](https://gumroad.com/l/CrystalMentality) in the following formats: epub, html, mobi, pdf, and txt.
> 
> Also I *think* Max gets a higher cut of profits on Gumroad, but I'm not too sure about that so don't hold me to it.
> 
> PS WOOOOOOO-HOOOOO!!!!! I'm not going to sleep tonight with such a good book ready for reading!
> 
> EDIT: Amusing piece of information I had to share. In the book, Max says the book will be released into the public domain on January 1, 2039 which makes sense since that's the year the story starts in the book.

>> **u/Empiricist_or_not** [+2]  *Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm* (5 hours later)
>> 
>> Thank you this works for text to speech.

>>> **u/Roxolan** [+5]  *Head of antimemetiWalmart senior assistant manager* (18 hours later)
>>> 
>>> The one time the text-to-speech voice is completely appropriate.

>>>> **u/Empiricist_or_not** [+1]  *Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm* (20 hours later)
>>>> 
>>>> I've been using it so long that the monotone doesn't affect my enjoyment.

>> **u/Raelifin** [+2]  *Cult of Face* (7 days later)
>> 
>> I do get higher profits on gumroad! It's a really great service, but most people prefer Amazon. Glad you liked it. :D

>> **u/Terkala** [+1]  (2 hours later)
>> 
>> Link to the first book?

>>> **u/xamueljones** [+6]  *My arch-enemy is entropy* (2 hours later)
>>> 
>>> What do you mean? The first book's free on the website, so it's not on Gumroad at all. There's only the [website](http://crystal.raelifin.com/) itself and [Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/Crystal-Society-Trilogy-Book-ebook/dp/B01AYT6A3C).
>>> 
>>> EDIT: /u/Terkala, I made a mistake before. [Crystal Society](https://gumroad.com/raelifin) *is* available on Gumroad. But it's the same thing as on the website. Free with a name your price to buy it in all five formats.

>>>> **u/Terkala** [+1]  (3 hours later)
>>>> 
>>>> Thanks, I had missed his sites download link.

> **u/Aretii** [+12]  *Cultist of Cthugha* (8 hours later)
> 
> Finished.
> 
> I enjoyed this more than Crystal Society. It felt shorter, though I haven't compared to see if that's true (I read the first online and the second on my Kindle app, so can't simply compare). It was more abstract and inhuman, with some delightfully creepy bits. I appreciated that the author took pains to make this feel different from Crystal Society, though I expect that will cause some negative reactions as well.
> 
> Given the state of things near the end, I have no idea what Crystal Eternity will be like, and that makes me happy.

>> **u/xamueljones** [+5]  *My arch-enemy is entropy* (9 hours later)
>> 
>> Crystal Society's pdf form had 747 pages compared to Crystal Mentality's 535 pages.

>> **u/Empiricist_or_not** [+3]  *Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm* (a day later)
>> 
>> I'm about 90% there and I'd prompt you to re-read the prologue of book 1.  I do know I'm going to re-read book one to see how much certain events are observable in hindsight.

>> **u/Raelifin** [+2]  *Cult of Face* (7 days later)
>> 
>> Aw, you just made my night. Thank you!
>> 
>> If you bought the book on Amazon, would you mind leaving this as a review?

>>> **u/Aretii** [+1]  *Cultist of Cthugha* (7 days later)
>>> 
>>> Done!

>>>> **u/Raelifin** [+1]  *Cult of Face* (7 days later)
>>>> 
>>>> Thank you!

>> **u/Empiricist_or_not** [+1]  *Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm* (2 days later)
>> 
>> [My guess  and or Spoiler implied by the prologue](#s "The recipient of the story is likely one of the stored brains, and Heart is back and keeping them from Face")

>>> **u/rictic** [+1]  (3 days later)
>>> 
>>> [Spoiler](#s "I can also see Vision->Vista's purpose being served by simulating a universe, and such a universe would likely be more recognizable than one run by Heart (as Heart would want to make some sort of pleasure/eutopia sim)")

>>>> **u/Empiricist_or_not** [+2]  *Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm* (3 days later)
>>>> 
>>>> True, but (from the prologue my emphasis added):
>>>> 
>>>> >Though I do not know the specifics, I can guess that you will be more comfortable if I speak of your God as though she were a woman. Indeed, she embodies many traits that are associated with **human mothers**.

>>>>> **u/MolochHASME** [+2]  (3 days later)
>>>>> 
>>>>> [spoiler](#s " heart seems to fit that description. She hasn't been deleted so there still is a chance that she can be brought back by some means. It's possible that since heart... ever since she had been removed from power had considered the other AI's enemies much earlier than Face and had been making plans accordingly. It's possible the reason she was fine with being put into stasis was that she had already found a way to escape or otherwise win. It's also possible that the warden in the prologue is some unmet AI yet to be created.")

>>>>> **u/rictic** [+1]  (4 days later)
>>>>> 
>>>>> [Spoiler](#s "Nice catch! Ok, now I'm leaning more towards heart. Maybe the world in which the reader is supposed to be situated in is different than ours? I kinda got the impression from the prologue that our real actual world is an emulation, and this just doesn't seem like a world heart would make. Perhaps she's constrained.")

>>>>>> **u/Empiricist_or_not** [+1]  *Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm* (5 days later)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> [Speculation](#s "What world would Heart make if the only surviving humans were the preserved brains on Mars, somehow only a backup of Heart was on Mars bootstrapping and in the war for super-exponential dominance on earth Humanity died off, but Face survived, and or won?  I'd assume something computational, hidden, and leaving the solar system as covertly and rapidly as feasible.  Heart may be the youngest but we should at least assume heart is at least a little smarter than we are by the time the war starts.")

> **u/Empiricist_or_not** [+5]  *Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm* (an hour later)
> 
> Is there an audible in the works?

> **u/None** [+3]  (16 hours later)
> 
> [deleted]

>> **u/Raelifin** [+2]  *Cult of Face* (7 days later)
>> 
>> Thanks for saying this! I'm glad to know the content warning served someone well. :)

>> **u/t3tsubo** [+1]  (21 days later)
>> 
>> There's one (pseudo) sex scene and a few mentions of pornography as the AI bumbles around the internet. Not graphic by any means.

> **u/holomanga** [+3]  (6 days later)
> 
> [](#s "Fusion is just a cheap trick to make weak goal-threads stronger.")

> **u/TK17Studios** [+7]  *Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning* (47 minutes later)
> 
> -_-

>> **u/None** [+2]  (55 minutes later)
>> 
>> Elaborate?

>>> **u/Aretii** [+4]  *Cultist of Cthugha* (8 hours later)
>>> 
>>> TK17 famously hated Crystal Society.

>>>> **u/rochea** [+2]  (13 hours later)
>>>> 
>>>> interesting! link?

>>>>> **u/Roxolan** [+3]  *Head of antimemetiWalmart senior assistant manager* (18 hours later)
>>>>> 
>>>>> Don't have it on hand, but basically he really liked the beginning but found the rest to be schlock sci-fi. 
>>>>> 
>>>>> I didn't dislike those parts as much as TK17 did, but I agree the shift is there and it's not great.
>>>>> 
>>>>> (See also: *Blood Music*, *Permutation City*.)

>>> **u/Draconomial** [+3]  *Sunshine Regiment* (an hour later)
>>> 
>>> Ah, it's pay-to-read. I'd buy it but I'm overdrafted $40 and unemployed. Maybe next year

>>>> **u/major_fox_pass** [+14]  (4 hours later)
>>>> 
>>>> PM me your amazon details or a wishlist with the book included and I'll buy it for you.

> **u/Empiricist_or_not** [+2]  *Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm* (20 hours later)
> 
> Did anyone figure out growths 3x3x3 matrix? (I haven't gotten to the explanation yet so please only spoiler me if I've missed something I should realize before it's explained)

>> **u/xamueljones** [+4]  *My arch-enemy is entropy* (21 hours later)
>> 
>> I don't actually know the answer, so read on if you wish to know what my guess is.
>> 
>> ................
>> 
>> I'm guessing that the numbers themselves aren't important. I believe the numbers are a location/coordinates in the memory space. This would make sense because according to some quick googling, a qubit can be represented by a real number (which indicates an angle in a [Bloch sphere](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloch_sphere)?) and two complex numbers which correspond to a column in the matrix. Please note that I know very little about quantum computing and could be completely wrong about qubit representations. Of course, I have no clue what the poem has to do with anything.

>>> **u/Empiricist_or_not** [+2]  *Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm* (23 hours later)
>>> 
>>> On phone so I'll only say thumbs up till I can spoiler properly

>>> **u/Draconomial** [+2]  *Sunshine Regiment* (a day later)
>>> 
>>> Growth was asked a question, to which it replied with the memory coordinate of the answer. That's my guess, anyways. I'm in the middle of chapter 14. Thank you u/major_fox_pass!

>>> **u/Raelifin** [+2]  *Cult of Face* (7 days later)
>>> 
>>> It's not a memory address.
>>> 
>>> Growth is testing Face's intelligence and lateral thinking. The numbers, as with the poem, are a way of obliquely talking about the situation without revealing information and potentially helping Face. I'll leave it to additional speculation to decode the meaning.

> **u/MolochHASME** [+2]  (a day later)
> 
> after [Spoiler](/s "Heart died") I lost interest in the story [spoiler](/s "Does she ever come back?")

>> **u/adad64** [+2]  *Chaos Legion* (a day later)
>> 
>> Nooope

>>> **u/MolochHASME** [+2]  (a day later)
>>> 
>>> :(

>> **u/Empiricist_or_not** [+1]  *Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm* (3 days later)
>> 
>> [Potentially heartening spoiler](#s "Go r-read the prelude to book 1. Rictic and  are discussing who we think is running the simulation on the heads above.  I think heart he thinks Vista.  we probably won't find out till next year. ")

> **u/rictic** [+2]  (3 days later)
> 
> If anyone's interested in speculating/wild mass guessing about the book, come join us on /r/crystalbooks
> 
> I've got a post up about the nameless here: https://www.reddit.com/r/CrystalBooks/comments/5pldlj

> **u/nolrai** [+1]  (an hour later)
> 
> What does HSF mean?

>> **u/None** [+4]  (an hour later)
>> 
>> [deleted]

>>> **u/nolrai** [+1]  (23 hours later)
>>> 
>>> Ah, I forgot about the sidebar! Thank you.

> **u/adad64** [+1]  *Chaos Legion* (a day later)
> 
> Just finished it, thank you so much for the heads up! I've been waiting for this one since the first book got posted here.

---