7.8 KiB
Unsong Chapter 58: ...And Now The Form Of Enion
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Author: u/Fredlage *
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URL: http://unsongbook.com/chapter-58-and-now-the-form-of-enion/
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Score: 61
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Created: 2017-02-06T01:36:36
Post:
Comments:
u/None [+16] (7 hours later)
[I think the traditional Jewish answer,] thought Ana [is that you can start by being good for the wrong reasons, but then the changes will stick and make you the sort of person who does things for the right reasons.]
If you reverse this, the theory about "The Other King," being either the Comet King or Robin makes a lot more sense.
u/ZeroNihilist [+10] (8 hours later)
If you start by being evil for the right reasons it will make you the sort of person who does evil for the wrong reasons.
It fits perfectly, well spotted.
u/Gurkenglas [+9] (12 hours later)
Hack Countenance, see what was the last name his computer gave him, then add a Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh?
This guy's a genius. Except if Aaron doesn't remember that that was how he got the name?
u/Fredlage [+5] (14 hours later)
Well, he's the one telling the story, so if he doesn't remember yet, he's going to. However, that doesn't seem to be the case considering he didn't even notice he'd been confounded until Sarah told him, which doesn't really match with him not remembering how he got the name. Maybe the confounding made him remember the meh meh meh when he actually said something else, but still, 52 out of 58 letters is an immense progress, especially if the last 6 are in fact just a repetition of the same letter
u/monkyyy0 [+2] (17 hours later)
6 x 24 is well within human bruteforce range and they have a computer
u/zhanyin [+2] (23 hours later)
If you knew it was the same letter, it'd just be 24. If you didn't it'd be 24 ^ 6, not 24 x 6. 24 ^ 6 is almost two hundred million, so computer, yes, humans, not really in the time they have.
u/Fredlage [+1] (a day later)
Meaning they'll have to convince Sarah to do the brute forcing
u/None [+1] (2 days later)
They have the world's greatest kabbalist and AST on hand. I'd like to think they'd be able to narrow it down a bit more than that before resorting to brute force.
u/Xenograteful [+9] (10 hours later)
Here's the full quote by Derek Parfit:
"Is the truth depressing? Some may find it so. But I find it liberating, and consoling. When I believed that my existence was a further fact, I seemed imprisoned in myself. My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through which I was moving faster every year, and at the end of which there was darkness. When I changed my view, the walls of my glass tunnel disappeared. I now live in the open air. There is still a difference between my life and the lives of other people. But the difference is less. Other people are closer. I am less concerned about the rest of my own life, and more concerned about the lives of others.
When I believed [that personal identity is what matters], I also cared more about my inevitable death. After my death, there will be no one living who will be me. I can now redescribe this fact. Though there will later be many experiences, none of these experiences will be connected to my present experiences by chains of such direct connections as those involved in experience-memory, or in the carrying out of an earlier intention. Some of these future experiences may be related to my present experiences in less direct ways. There will later be some memories about my life. And there may later be thoughts that are influenced by mine, or things done as the result of my advice. My death will break the more direct relations between my present experiences and future experiences, but it will not break various other relations. This is all there is to the fact that there will be no one living who will be me. Now that I have seen this, my death seems to me less bad."
And as some of you may know, he died in January this year.
u/Xenograteful [+7] (13 hours later)
The reason I like this quote so much is that he doesn't say anything that is untrue, all that differs from the norm is how he chooses to value different things. Things like "No one will die because the atoms that were in their bodies will still exist" or "We are all one" are only true if you stretch the terms used in them so much that they become useless if you used them the same way in any other context.
Whereas Derek Parfit clearly acknowledges that when he dies, his self will vanish, if you use commonly understood meanings for those terms. He admits that there is really something in the real world that almost all people associate with the word 'self', he just chooses not to place so much importance on that thing (at least this is what he claims to do).
u/monkyyy0 [+2] (17 hours later)
Well arron just said god isn't perfect, I'm still expecting the moral of the story to be god isn't worth worship or praise
Maybe destroying hell involves killing god?
Edit// hey look they are giving Sarah mind reading powers, possibly over 6 people including a very convincing terrorist and the most powerful human, next chapter "how skynet feeling got hurt by my doubts and joined a terrorist cell"
u/Xenograteful [+3] (19 hours later)
Well arron just said god isn't perfect, I'm still expecting the moral of the story to be god isn't worth worship or praise
I'd be really disappointed if the lesson of the story didn't amount to more than what you'd get from browsing /r/atheism. If I remember correctly, Scott made this story to explore issues about the real world in an indirect way (like all stories do to some extent), and our world is hardly ever that simple.
u/monkyyy0 [+2] (20 hours later)
I thought the whole point of stories is to drive simple but hard to accept points across in a deep emotional way.
I would think the problem of evil would be one of those points.
u/Xenograteful [+5] (20 hours later)
Okay.
I challenge you to find one piece of writing by Scott where he talks - indirectly or directly - about how it's important that you don't worship/praise/believe in God (besides Unsong if you interpret it that way). If you don't find one (I didn't, and I've been reading his writings since 2012), is it all that likely that he would write a really long book making that kind of point?
Whereas there are lots and lots of writings in which he talks about ethics including multiple ones about how unbearable all the suffering that he has witnessed as a doctor is to him.
So I stand by my stance, Unsong is on some level about ethics and many other things in our world - the ethical portion is about how to deal with all the suffering and death that exists now and in the future, finding out the systematic and other reasons why the world is in such a condition and finding out ways to alleviate those things in any way.
u/ulyssessword [+3] (20 hours later)
There's also this:
If one day someone looks at a theory and says “That looks convincing, but not really any more convincing than Aaron’s theory about ‘There’s A Hole In My Bucket,’ and I know Scott made that up for laughs, so maybe this is also made up,” then I’ve done my job.
u/t3tsubo [+1] (a day later)
Thought is the universal solvent.
I really like this quote. It struck me as nonchalantly profound.
u/MugaSofer [+1] (6 days later)
It certainly makes me appreciate what makes cosmic horror so terrifying ... and probably what makes Cordyceps