119 KiB
[Comedy] Piss off /r/rational in one sentence. Go!
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Author: u/xamueljones My arch-enemy is entropy*
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/7vyrty/comedy_piss_off_rrational_in_one_sentence_go/
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Score: 78
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Created: 2018-02-07T19:41:16
Post:
Idea completely stolen from here.
Let's see if we can learn a valuable lesson about ourselves or if I can hit negative post karma on my account.
Comments:
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+199] Fruit flies like a banana (33 minutes later)
"You can suspend your disbelief about dragons but not inconsistent travel times?"
u/CouteauBleu [+21] We are the Empire. (3 hours later)
I think you nailed it.
u/thrawnca [+21] Carbon-based biped (2 days later)
The script for a Road Runner cartoon may contain huge violations of physics, but it still shouldn't contain spelling errors.
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+11] Mouse Army (4 hours later)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Flight_of_Dragons_(book)) was perhaps my first rational/ish book. Dragon flight is easy.
u/xamueljones [+3] My arch-enemy is entropy (6 hours later)
If you are having trouble with the double parentheses at the end of the link, put a \ before the first one.
u/WadeSwiftly [+2] (5 hours later)
Double post and broken quote.
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+1] Mouse Army (5 hours later)
Thanks!
u/grokkingStuff [+7] (10 hours later)
What’s it referring to?
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+33] Fruit flies like a banana (10 hours later)
Non-specifically, the idea that suspension of disbelief for one thing (like the existence of werewolves) means suspension of disbelief for a totally different thing (like a plot that doesn't make sense). It's fairly common to see that line of argument used (I have a few guesses why).
More specifically, and what I was thinking of when I made that comment, there were a few episodes of a popular fantasy series (show's name) where the producers played fast and loose with the established speeds and travel times in order to make their dramatic moments happen, and that particular line was one that I saw a fair amount, because that show has big honking dragons.
u/v_sz [+5] (3 days later)
Indeed, and this is also what really makes the difference between hard and soft sci-fi. You can write a hard sci-fi story in a world with a lot of fantastic and exotic violations of known physical laws, if the world and the plot is consistent.
You can have the weirdest magic, you can have literal gods literally walk the earth, the suspension of disbelief can work if your story sticks to the rules it set up. I could imagine some pretty hard and rational fic in a D&D setting, even if it makes fun of many of its ridiculous features, mainly because how well-established the rules of magic are: it is well known and well described what every spell can and cannot do.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+3] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (6 days later)
I could imagine some pretty hard and rational fic in a D&D setting
u/None [+1] (19 hours later)
Just curious, what are your guesses as to why?
u/Oaden [+29] (20 hours later)
Why people complain about it? Cause it breaks the rules.
Game of Thrones is set in a universe where Dragons exist. These dragons can fly. It is also set in a universe where throughout the show, people travel at medieval speeds.
Then we enter the last part, and the dragons fly, as we know they can. And some dude suddenly travels 2000 miles in day.... hold up. that ain't right. How did he do that? And our suspension of disbelief is broken.
u/wren42 [+8] (20 hours later)
yeah the last season was terrible for this. I was completely thrown out of the story because the timelines were so wonky I was distracted figuring out how it fit together.
u/kaukamieli [+1] (23 hours later)
Meh. I feel it's just about that one flight. But I don't watch the thing with a map and haven't read the books.
u/wren42 [+12] (23 hours later)
it was a problem through the whole series that came to a head with that flight.
More and more, characters started jumping around from place to place like they had jetpacks. Littlefinger and Varys were the worst about this. They would pop 1000 miles in the course of an episode, where it took months in the past. This was hand-waved all along by show watchers as just asynchronous timelines, and while it felt weak it was an explanation that just had to be accepted.
The scene on the frozen lake put an end to the timeline explanation.
Here we had events that had to be lined up chronologically, because they were causal.
- Jon and team gets chased by wights.
- Jon sends Gendry to run to the wall.
- Jon is trapped on the island in the lake. it is day time and the lake is melty.
- Gendry runs to the wall - a trip that was a substantial trek just an episode earlier
- A raven is dispatched to Dany
- Raven arrives at Danny. It is day time.
- Dany starts flying to the wall.
- It's night time on the lake, and the ice freezes. wights attack.
- Dany arrives.
This all has to happen in less than a single day. The distance from Dragonstone to the wall is thousands of miles. It's completely implausible, and compiled on top of all the previous examples of teleporting characters it just broke the ice, so to speak.
u/kaukamieli [+1] (a day later)
Not sure if it absolutely has just a day.
u/wren42 [+12] (a day later)
there's a few reasons for this:
- the wights were waiting for the ice to freeze to attack.
- the group was stranded on the lake with no supplies, no fire, and a wounded person. they couldn't survive for very long in these conditions.
- the sun is shown to set.
u/kaukamieli [+2] (a day later)
Does a lake freeze in a night so that people can walk on it? The guys don't even use hats. They probably have some supplies, as they'd be idiots doing that trip without, but they were betty tired at that point anyway. Sun sets every night.
u/KilotonDefenestrator [+4] (3 days later)
Then they could have taken a few seconds to show those extra days. It would have cost maybe six minutes total of the episode to show the blacksmith running heroically through the snowy landscape (and lets forget he saw snow the first time in his life just days ago, and has lived in a city all his life), shown the gang on the island suffering from the cold more and more every day, and shown the raven and dragonflight passing over various geography at various times of day. It could have been short cuts mixed in with some other part of the plot going on.
Terribly handled. I was going "oh, come on!" multiple times in that episode. And it doesn't end with the travel times.
Like when Snow decides to run away from the rescue dragon (doh!), fall and sink into a freezing lake, not only survive but crawl up, find his sword within easy reach and then not die from hypothermia before a deus ex ranger rides in, puts snow on his undead-immune horse and then promtly sacrifices himself. It is so obvious that those painful plot acrobatics were just to make Denny worried and then happy when Snow lives.
So, yeah, that rant felt good. It's even more glaring when the series is so damn good in other aspects.
u/kaukamieli [+2] (3 days later)
Yes, it's definitely badly handed. While there isn't much of proof of it more than one day, there really isn't of it taking just one day either. The travel did suck. The show has been very bad about people wearing hats in winter too, which is absofuckinglutely ridiculous.
u/tomtan [+1] (2 days later)
Yes, that's how I retconned it in my mind.
u/kaukamieli [+2] (2 days later)
It's still ridiculous. IIRC she didn't have a hat either so she'd just freeze her brains. Especially with the flying speeds...
u/None [+1] (21 hours later)
I understand why there's a difference, I guess I was asking why you think people's counterargument (why can't you suspend disbelief on both types) is so common
u/Kishoto [+6] (3 days later)
Not the original commenter but, in my opinion, it's because there's a difference between upfront, stated and accepted suspension of disbelief (aka "Wands let people do magic") and unexplained inconsistent disbelief (aka "These horseless carriages are actually pulled by winged death-horses that you can't see and no one's mentioned in the four years you've been here")
The issue's magnified by how much it impacts the plot. Thestrals weren't 'game breaking' (floos, brooms, apparition, etc.) so it was fine, to a point. The GoT thing was legitimately game breaking.
u/Oaden [+1] (22 hours later)
I suppose cause people have different tolerances, and if my disbelief is still suspended, the complaints from someone else seem petty
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+9] Fruit flies like a banana (23 hours later)
I think that it actually is common for different works to adhere to different standards of "reality". Cartoons would be one good example, especially the classics like Bugs Bunny or Wile E. Coyote; the work is absurdist, and exists within this framework wherein someone getting smashed in the head and growing a foot-long lump exists beside gravity kicking in when you realize that you're not running over flat land. Magical realism is written such that metaphorical or visual aberrations are part of the grammar of the work. Surrealism is about evoking something in the reader rather than being strictly literal.
So then you get people who come to science fiction or fantasy, and see something like a dragon, and think "oh, okay, everything in this story is metaphor or allegory or not supposed to make sense on close inspection" even when that's clearly contradicted by the narrative grammar, word of god, or just common sense.
In a way, fiction trains us in how to read it, and I think the reaction of "it's fantasy, therefore it's made of plot holes" is just that training gone amok. (As compared to something like telenovellas or soap operas, which often are made of contrivances and plot holes, but that's part of how they're meant to be enjoyed, and how they present themselves.)
(I think maybe if I make this argument again it will be with an extended metaphor using painters like Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso, and Chuck Close, each with their own unique style, where their individual paintings would be ruined if a tenth of that painting was done in a completely different style.)
u/NoYouTryAnother [+1] (a day later)
Much more egregious: That line was actually coined by one of the show's showrunners/producers/whatever.
u/draykhar [+113] (42 minutes later)
"Of course an AI would be friendly, who would design an AI if it might destroy the world?"
u/DaystarEld [+68] Pokémon Professor (7 hours later)
"We would just unplug it!"
u/crivtox [+11] Closed Time Loop Enthusiast (22 hours later)
"And If I couldn't Ill just go grab my shotgun and shoot the computer. Besides if its that dangerous just dont do it"
u/aimetafamille [+10] (10 hours later)
This made me cringe so much, well done
u/crivtox [+7] Closed Time Loop Enthusiast (22 hours later)
"Can't we just program it to find better and better goals until it knows what the best goals are" . (edit : wait ,I have a better one " You mean something like skynet?")
u/None [+7] (8 days later)
"But a paperclip-optimizer would discover paperclip maximizing is stupid !"
u/Revive_Revival [+189] (3 hours later)
"I love rational fiction, I have read all of Ayn Rand's books"
u/Trips-Over-Tail [+43] Death of Crabs (4 hours later)
Jesus Christ.
u/silver7017 [+24] (11 hours later)
this is a masterpiece
u/adad64 [+9] Chaos Legion (a day later)
Oh my sweet Celestia rape me with a solar flare. That's a good one.
u/CWRules [+4] (20 hours later)
Why is this not at the top?
u/None [+9] (a day later)
To the gulags with you.
u/None [+3] (20 hours later)
You got me.
u/lars_uf3 [+2] (a day later)
Ignorant wannabe rationalist here, whats wrong with ayn rand's books? (I havent read them)
u/ArgentStonecutter [+4] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (6 days later)
They are Swiss Family Robinson^* levels of Mary Sue presented as a hard rational way to construct a working society. Worse, there are literally millions of people who believe in them.
^(* Oh look we need something for our fantasy treehouse, and we suddenly discover that if you do something nobody would ever do with a kangaroo and a redneck bicycle pump you can weeble weeble weeble and there it is!)
u/Subrosian_Smithy [+3] Nudist Beach (4 days later)
Broadly speaking, Rand didn't just try to deal with the world in a rational manner, but also to derive an "objective" system of morality. By means of pure objective reason and rationality.
Which is... not brilliant, even before addressing Rand's enthusiasm for capitalism.
u/1573594268 [+2] (4 days later)
Wrote Atlas Shrugged.
u/Makin- [+93] homestuck ratfic, you can do it (an hour later)
You know, J.K. Rowling made an excellent point about death being the next great adventure. Where is your experimental spirit?
u/t3tsubo [+13] (19 hours later)
man the experimental spirit line at the end got my eye twitching
u/THEHYPERBOLOID [+2] (4 days later)
Its existence is unproven.
u/Anderkent [+5] (4 days later)
Only one way to test.
u/THEHYPERBOLOID [+2] (6 days later)
I'm not sure that killing myself to undertake the next great adventure would necessarily indicate the existence of my experimental spirit.
u/XxChronOblivionxX [+78] (30 minutes later)
Why can't you just turn your brain off and enjoy something?
u/rhaps0dy4 [+14] (14 hours later)
I did that quite recently (with the latest Star Wars movie) and I loved the experience.
u/Ardvarkeating101 [+10] Father of Learning (21 hours later)
Meth is a hell of a drug?
u/MrCogmor [+3] (a day later)
Reminds me of http://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0143.html
u/Rouninscholar [+55] (36 minutes later)
You know, sitting around and debating "magic" or "super powers" is pretty much the biggest waste of time I can think of, much less for "smart" people who are supposed to be good at "problem solving". Go do something productive.
u/IWantUsToMerge [+10] (4 hours later)
Nahh, my response to that is just "Yeah, I know, it's akrasia, I'm filth"
u/None [+2] (a day later)
Shit dude, why do you think I've not gotten through my reading backlist?
u/MonstrousBird [+1] (a day later)
This makes me wince mostly for the overuse of scare quotes, so well done :-)
u/None [+1] (8 days later)
"This" "makes" "me" "wince" "mostly" "for" "the" "overuse" "of" "scare" "quotes", "so" "well" "done" ":-)"
"Fixed" "That" "For" "You"
u/JackStargazer [+55] Primordial Apologist (11 hours later)
Hey guys, I heard about this Roko's Basilisk thing, let's have a thread about it!
u/CouteauBleu [+16] We are the Empire. (16 hours later)
I want to kill you a little.
u/Revisional_Sin [+6] (4 days later)
Man, I always knew those autists were a cult. How can they believe such a thing?
u/Revisional_Sin [+6] (4 days later)
I hear the leader was pissed that the Thetan was leaked.
u/None [+3] (8 days later)
"Rationalists believe in Roko's Basilisk."
u/Roxolan [+0] Head of antimemetiWalmart senior assistant manager (6 days later)
So bad that even mentioning it ironically is enough to cause reputational harm to the community. So, congratulations, but also, ugh.
u/xamueljones [+94] My arch-enemy is entropy (41 seconds later)
It's magic! It doesn't need to be consistent or explained!
u/None [+29] (5 hours later)
Oh, look. My eye twitch came back. And it brought a friend!
u/melmonella [+1] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (13 hours later)
Is it a trigger twitch?
u/SometimesATroll [+24] (19 hours later)
Now I kind of want to see a story where magic exists but is completely inconsistent. Characters and societies are constantly trying to figure out the new rules of magic before they change again. The most powerful groups are the ones with the resources to quickly discover laws of magic and make use of them while they can.
u/iceman012 [+19] (a day later)
One story I've really been wanting to write is in a setting where magician's strengths are inversely related to how well they understand magic. So you discover you have the gift of magic, start playing around with it, learning its powers and limitations, write down the system, and suddenly you can't do magic anymore. Meanwhile your buddy, who also developed the gift but who is as dumb as a rock, continues to throw fireballs and enchantments around despite having no clue how it works.
u/None [+18] (a day later)
[removed]
u/ksarnek [+5] (a day later)
It's not that one character, it's that spoiler, as far as we know.
u/thrawnca [+12] Carbon-based biped (2 days later)
I've read one about a world with fixed and well understood laws of magic, and a society built on them, until it turns out that there are previously unknown "metamagicians" who can, with effort, replace each law with different variations on the theme. Eg changing from the Maxim of Persistence: Perfection is Eternal, which requires exactly accurate performance of rituals, to the Maxim of Perseverance: Repetition Unto Success, which doesn't care about accuracy but requires the rituals to be done hundreds of times.
Cue societal chaos.
u/lordcirth [+1] (3 days later)
Do you remember where that was?
u/thrawnca [+6] Carbon-based biped (3 days later)
It's on my bookshelf, actually :D. It's "Secret of the Sixth Magic", sequel to "Master of the Five Magics" (which I haven't read).
u/ArgentStonecutter [+3] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (6 days later)
OH FUCK
Master of the Five Magics actually starts out pretty hard-fantasy but by the end I'm going "you did the equivalent of auditing the first class in 'intro to the fifth magic' and now you're beating up demons with it?"
OK, I enjoyed it, guilty pleasure, but if I was reading it now I'd classify it as wish-fulfillment SI fanfic.
I vaguely remember what you're talking about but I don't actually remember reading the sequels. Maybe I did.
Edit: "OH FUCK" wasn't directed at the previous commentor, it was just exasperation at myself as the fail of this book came pouring back in.
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (6 days later)
Oh, I never claimed it was ratfic :D
Though as I say, I haven't read the original. I don't recall the sequel being awfully SoD-breaking.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+1] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (6 days later)
Oh, I never claimed it was ratfic :D
A lot of people go on about it being a genre-definer for hard fantasy.
I don't recall the sequel being awfully SoD-breaking.
Like I said, I enjoyed it, but by the end it was like a JRPG where everything's on rails and you got XP by finding plot tokens.
Edit: Oh god, apparently Patrick Rothfuss lists it as an influence.
u/OutOfNiceUsernames [+4] fear of last pages (22 hours later)
IIRC, at least two stories like this were periodically getting mentioned in this sub 1–2 years ago.
Also IIRC, one of them was Ra.
u/ricree [+14] (a day later)
Unsong is almost certainly the other one you're thinking about, and is arguably a better example than Ra, since Ra's particular brand of magic is mostly consistent even though it deliberately flies in the fact of most known science.
Unsong, on the other hand, has a world where rational materialism is literally breaking down in favor of metaphysical symbolism and abstract theology. So of course megacorporations start manipulating this by using sweatshops to brute-force discover the setting's magic.
u/ksarnek [+13] (a day later)
You also have one kind of magic that essentially consists in convincing the universe that it should let you do magic, known as "placebomancy".
u/Anderkent [+3] (4 days later)
Tales of mu is (/used to - I haven't read it in years) kinda like that except people weren't trying to figure the rules out because that would trigger them changing.
u/Ev0nix [+4] (a day later)
Ell Goonish Shive has something sorta like that, Magic is intelligent but not in a way we would recognise and the rules are "built?" with narrative causality in mind, they thus can be slightly inconsistent and with exsploitabilities and flexabilities but this is fine due to the cultural circumstances this iteration of magical law surrounds, if Magic can't remain in it's cultural context or it's fundamental laws are called into conflict and it cannot be resolved with minor subtle changes I.E. a magitech civilization limited by hideously expensive elemental aluminium finds a way to mass produce it or something philosophically important to the Magic like the distinction between organic and inorganic becomes irrelevant or like in the stories case fundamentally secret magic becomes public then the whole thing is rebuilt from the ground up, this principle works in reverse too, if the removal of some particular laws means that a race that uses shapeshifting in their biology can no longer shapeshift and would go exstinct then those laws are less likely to change. That said it's not that big a part of the story, if you want something much better then try reading Fine Structure, it quite different, rather darker, more complex and definitely "Sci-Fi"er and has a mechanic like that quite centeral, I shant say more.
u/therealflinchy [+2] (19 hours later)
man if i had more of a willingness to write something that does justice to the idea...
such a frustratingly good sounding idea.
u/boomfarmer [+1] Trying to be helpful (3 days later)
You may be interested in the Effulgence glowfic marked with the symbella Ψ at https://edgeofyourseat.dreamwidth.org/2121.html
And if that sentence needs explanation, see https://belltower.dreamwidth.org/8579.html and http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Roleplay/Glowfic
u/Anderkent [+1] (4 days later)
Waaaait, glowfic has its own portal now? I don't have to scroll diagonally and expand posts manually?
This changes everything.
u/Roxolan [+1] Head of antimemetiWalmart senior assistant manager (6 days later)
That setting, Materia, is recurrent. I vaguely recall it showing up somewhere in Incandescence, and I'm in the middle of its second appearance in Silmaril.
It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that the world is actually which explains its anti-science and anti-hubris properties. It's sort of a dark mirror of Worth the Candle in that way.
u/boomfarmer [+1] Trying to be helpful (9 days later)
Spoiler
ohhhhh, that explains it so much.
u/VelarWar [+1] (6 days later)
I think you've just inspired me. I currently have an idea in the works but have no clue as to the setting I want (real world? alternate history? completely fantasy?) until now. I did know that I wanted something vaguely 18th early 19th century Europe but with completely different societal rules and your idea just made a lot of things fit together. Would you mind if I wrote it?
u/SometimesATroll [+1] (6 days later)
This was always just an idle thought. And I did say I wanted to see it, not that I wanted to write it.
You don't need my permission, but you have it.
u/None [+1] (8 days later)
It's called "economic history".
u/KilotonDefenestrator [+2] (3 days later)
Ow! Ow ow ow! Make it stop!
u/AurelianoTampa [+45] (an hour later)
Sword Art Online is the greatest example of anime rational fiction!
u/Marthinwurer [+6] (9 hours later)
Ah, so that's why I like it so much. (No really, why do I like it so much?)
u/Oaden [+13] (20 hours later)
Cause it started kind of awesome, and by the time it turned to shit, my brain had spend enough time to convince me that it had to be good, otherwise I wouldn't still be watching it.
u/wren42 [+1] (20 hours later)
yeah that pretty much describes it for me. I knew it was crappy, I just didn't care.
u/trekie140 [+10] (20 hours later)
This YouTube video may be helpful to you.
u/Marthinwurer [+2] (22 hours later)
Thanks for the link!
u/adad64 [+7] Chaos Legion (a day later)
Have you seen the abridged series? I highly recommend it! Manages to fix a lot of the problems with SAO and is hilarious.
u/Marthinwurer [+1] (2 days later)
Yes I have, and I love it!
u/Sarkavonsy [+39] (7 hours later)
"Death gives life meaning."
u/None [+14] (8 hours later)
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u/Sarkavonsy [+18] (10 hours later)
That's a good one too, nice.
(assuming you weren't also trying to piss r/rational off, here and here. I doubt a million years will be enough to do all the stuff I want to do, if there even is a limit to that.)
u/None [+1] (11 hours later)
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u/eaglejarl [+24] (a day later)
What do you want to do that'd take more than a million years?
- Watch every amusing cat video
- Write every piece of fiction that pops into my head and won't go away
- Find out what life is like after you transform into a wolf or an eagle or a whale
- Become good enough at harp to perform in front of a major audience
- Ditto for standup comedy
- Read all the good fiction in existence
- Watch all the episodes of Firefly that our Friendly AI friend will create for me
- Go back to school and acquire advanced degrees in history, politics, mathematics, computer science...
- Have a life that is worth writing a memoir about and then write it
- Use an appropriate vehicle to explore the bottom of the ocean
- ...and the inside of the sun
- Perform a North Polar traversal of Saturn
- Go asteroid mining and strike it rich
- Play high stakes poker and win
- Play high stakes poker and lose
- Meet the love of my life and make her happy
- Go on a space walk
- Live in a space station
- Ride on a space elevator
- ...many, many, MANY more things
Seriously, if you ever find yourself bored then it's your own damn fault.
u/None [+9] (a day later)
[removed]
u/eaglejarl [+33] (a day later)
This conversation in a nutshell:
You: No one would want to live forever because you'd get bored.
Me: No, I wouldn't. Here's an enormous list of things that I would enjoy doing. I could always find stuff to keep from being bored.
You: No. You'd get bored.
Me: shrug
I suspect that you and I have different levels of ability to find things that interest us. I think you're also drastically underestimating the rate at which amazing new content is generated.
u/Tokyo_X-4 [+17] (a day later)
Eliezer has written a post on this exact problem, more or less, so I recommend you read it.
Putting aside the fact that you vastly underestimate how much of something it would take to get bored, and that you don't factor in the fact that some of these objectives might be done at the same time, we still haven't even skimmed the top of the barrel. How about: meet every human that ever lived, will live, and is living in every town within every country on every planet and get to know them until I love them better than they love themselves. Create simulated universes that perfectly represent my favorite fictional worlds and live out lifetimes as every single man woman and child within them, forgetting each time. Work on enough science to discover the key to faster-than-light travel and unravel the mysteries of the universe. Create alien species, if I can't find them on my own, and work silently to uplift them to the same standards that I hold myself.
The point isn't the amount of time any of these things take. The point is that I want to live a thousand years already in order to fulfill my goals, and in a thousand years I expect I'll want to live a thousand more. If these are things I can come up with as a sub-centenarian babe like myself, how many more objectives will I have thought up in a thousand years? What about a million? If I don't have any new goals, that's surely a crisis of creativity, not an objective limit on the number of possible unique mental states that a human can experience.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+1] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (6 days later)
Create alien species
They did that in Greg Egan's first novel.
In a couple of later works (like Crystal Nights, IIRC) he realizes that this is something only a sociopath would actually do.
u/Calsem [+8] (a day later)
That's a very small list that /u/eaglejarl probably spent ~5 minutes thinking of. You have 1,000,000 years to think of things to do.
u/eaglejarl [+8] (2 days later)
probably spent ~5 minutes
Less. :>
u/None [+1] (17 days later)
[removed]
u/Calsem [+2] (17 days later)
There may be a finite number of things to do, but that number is always increasing due to the millions of content creators. As you gathered more interests, eventually it would become simply impossible to keep up with everything.
Example: You can read a book in a day that would take an author a month to write. If you followed just ~30 authors then it would be a full-time job just to keep up with their work. And that's just one hobby.
Most authors are not that fast but the point still stands - no matter how long you live, there will be thousands of content creators creating content faster than you can consume it.
u/None [+1] (17 days later)
[removed]
u/Calsem [+2] (17 days later)
If you are able to find stuff you enjoy now, then people are producing content at a rate that satisfies you. As long as that rate continues, (or more likely increases considering population growth), you will be able to find new stuff to read.
u/hatten [+3] (12 days later)
A week late to the party, but I just want to nitpick about card-counting in poker. You can count cards in blackjack, but in poker the deck is completely reshuffled after every hand so it's completely worthless. Poker skills are about learning probabilities, bluffing, and reading and understanding all available information (raises, folds, bet sizes as well as unconscious signals people may send when nervous). If you're joined in your pursuit by other people you might be able to spend a lot of time one-upping and learning from each other.
u/None [+2] (12 days later)
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u/hatten [+1] (12 days later)
np! While I barely play it myself it's a super fascinating game with a big strategic depth. For the day you become invincible/get stuck in a timeloop/want to learn more I can recommend watching final tables of big tournaments (e.g. WSOP or Aussie Millions. recent one is http://www.twitch.tv/runitup/v/224579882 ), where the casters can see the cards that players have and can explain what the thought processes are, or simply finding twitch poker streamers that you like (nanonoko, jeffgrosspoker, kevinmartin987, runitup, lexveldhuis and many more)
u/iceman012 [+1] (a day later)
Watch every amusing cat video
What about hugging every cat?
u/ben_oni [+0] (2 days later)
- Watch every amusing cat video
They get repetitive and boring pretty quick.
- Write every piece of fiction that pops into my head and won't go away
You're just not creative enough.
- Find out what life is like after you transform into a wolf or an eagle or a whale
Pretty terrible, actually.
- Become good enough at harp to perform in front of a major audience
- Ditto for standup comedy
20 years. 30 tops.
- Read all the good fiction in existence
2 years.
- Watch all the episodes of Firefly that our Friendly AI friend will create for me
Rocks fall, everybody dies.
- Go back to school and acquire advanced degrees in history, politics, mathematics, computer science...
8 - 24 years.
- Have a life that is worth writing a memoir about and then write it
Write it as you go.
- Use an appropriate vehicle to explore the bottom of the ocean
There's nothing there but a bunch of bottom feeders.
- ...and the inside of the sun
Nope.
- Perform a North Polar traversal of Saturn
- Go asteroid mining and strike it rich
So boring!
- Play high stakes poker and win
- Play high stakes poker and lose
Does it have to be poker?
- Meet the love of my life and make her happy
Never going to happen, I don't care how long you live.
- Go on a space walk
- Live in a space station
- Ride on a space elevator
What is this, a bucket list? If you want to do it, just do it already. Okay, fine:
- Go on a space walk
No actual walking involved.
- Live in a space station
It's kind of interesting for the first 30 minutes, and then they show you the toilets.
- Ride on a space elevator
Takes way too long and doesn't get you very far.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (2 days later)
Who hurt you?
u/Trips-Over-Tail [+0] Death of Crabs (3 days later)
To be honest, some of those sound like you're just trying to fill the time. I'm more likely to to try undoing my immortality or erasing my memory so everything is new again than trying to watch all the cat videos, and I know that if I don't, watching the cat videos will be the only thing left to do, and I'm including genocide in that.
u/eaglejarl [+4] (5 days later)
If "commit genocide because I'm bored" is on your bucket list, I really hope you never achieve immortality.
u/Trips-Over-Tail [+2] Death of Crabs (5 days later)
It's not on the list, but it is mildly more interesting than cat videos. If I get to cat videos, it's because I've already exhausted both ends of the moral spectrum.
u/Sarkavonsy [+8] (21 hours later)
I mean, I don't have a million year long bucket list. I just have faith that future me will not run out of new things to do. And if she does, I'll hopefully have the option of increasing my intelligence to enable more novel experiences.
I don't think there's a finite number of interesting things to do in the universe, and I definitely don't think that I'll ever reach a point where I'll say "ok, that's enough, i want to stop existing forever now." That's the kind of thing death-supporters claim old people say, and I see no reason why it'd be more likely at 8000000 than at 80.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+2] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (6 days later)
Old people do say that, when the pain is intolerable and hope is gone.
But I assume that will have been solved because it's kind of the basis for this thought experiment.
u/FireHawkDelta [+1] ** (21 hours later)
All of the things I find that I want to do in the process of doing what I want to do, of course.
u/ben_oni [+1] (2 days later)
Being young it's hard to imagine, but it turns out that the number of things people want to do actually decreases as they get older. We just stop caring.
u/Sarkavonsy [+2] (2 days later)
Can you provide any solid evidence that this is not a result of humans aging physically? That it is specifically caused by us having been alive for more years, and nothing else? That if we achieved some manner of immortality and ceased physical aging, and spent all of our lives with as much energy and ability to act as we have in, say, our mid 20s to 30s, we would still stop caring about stuff after roughly a century?
u/ben_oni [+0] (3 days later)
Can you provide any solid evidence that this is not a result of humans aging physically?
You want to separate the aging of the body from the aging of the brain? That's one hell of a pipe dream.
u/Kishoto [+2] (3 days later)
So us being able to live for 1 mil+ years is something you're willing to debate back and forth but the idea that, in that time, we'd find some way to surpass the current limits of our own biology (which, in case I need to point it out, is a mandatory requirement of living that long) is where you draw the line and call it a pipe dream?
That's....dumb.
u/KilotonDefenestrator [+1] (3 days later)
There is a difference between aging (steady decline in cell functions) and the normal neuron configuration changes that result from new experiences, memories, dreams, thoughts, knowledge, etc.
Solving aging does not imply loss of brain function.
u/eaglejarl [+5] (a day later)
Man, talk about a high-class problem. ;P
u/None [+8] (a day later)
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u/sneakpeekbot [+4] (a day later)
Here's a sneak peek of /r/fifthworldproblems using the top posts of the year!
#1: DON'T👏SAY👏YOU👏KNOW👏HOW👏TO👏HELP👏ME👏UNLESS👏YOU👏CAN👏STOP👏THIS👏INCESSANT👏CLAPPING👏
#2: My daughter identifies as a small group of words standing together as a conceptual unit, typically forming a component of a clause. Should I be worried or is it just a phrase?
#3: I asked God what the most unlikely thing in the Universe was. He replied.
^^I'm ^^a ^^bot, ^^beep ^^boop ^^| ^^Downvote ^^to ^^remove ^^| ^^Contact ^^me ^^| ^^Info ^^| ^^Opt-out
u/silver7017 [+5] (11 hours later)
yeah, I expect immortals will have to get really weirdly creative to as the millennia start to pile up in order to avoid death by boredom.
u/None [+8] (11 hours later)
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u/silver7017 [+3] (15 hours later)
I don't know that madness and the exotic sorts of creativity one might need to develop in that circumstance would be all that different from an outside perspective. hopefully the presence of other such immortals which are themselves increasingly strange will keep actual reality interesting enough to prevent us from descending into eternal fantasy.
u/GopherAtl [+2] (16 hours later)
Either that or maybe just "death" by wireheading. I'm not sure burning out pleasure receptors is something that can get boring.
Louis Wu disagrees, but then, he's a fictional character, so his example doesn't carry that much weight.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+1] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (6 days later)
Either that or maybe just "death" by wireheading. I'm not sure burning out pleasure receptors is something that can get boring.
Reportedly, the "pleasure center" turns out to be more like an "addiction center" and not necessarily pleasurable at all.
u/None [+1] (7 days later)
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u/ArgentStonecutter [+1] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (7 days later)
https://io9.gizmodo.com/whats-it-really-like-to-have-your-pleasure-center-stimu-1716449443
u/None [+1] (17 days later)
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u/ArgentStonecutter [+2] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (17 days later)
It's not the best article on the subject I've read, that's for sure, but it was the best I could find in Google. I think I'd have to grep dead trees to find a better one, though.
u/None [+2] (a day later)
"Being immortal just gives you the time to get decadent and destroy yourself. Like when the Eldar made Slaanesh."
u/holomanga [+2] (7 days later)
Maybe. I hope I’ll find out myself. Please don’t kill me or anyone I care about.
u/None [+78] (34 minutes later)
[removed]
u/Frommerman [+28] (an hour later)
Holy shit on the last one.
u/boomfarmer [+4] Trying to be helpful (3 days later)
While it is indeed brain-stopping, I really really want to read CFAR's rationale for it.
u/therealflinchy [+12] (19 hours later)
"Rocks fall, Zorian and Zack die."
oh god no please stop
"Zorian suddenly wakes up and realizes it was all just a dream."
wehhhhhhhhhhhhhh
u/Mowtom_ [+4] (a day later)
"Rocks fall, Zorian and Zack die."
It's even better/worse thanks to the misspelling of Zach ;-;
u/PurposefulZephyr [+63] (18 minutes later)
"Who cares if it makes sense? It's just mindless fun!"
"Who the hell cares about your "bayesian reasoning"? You are wrong, end of story. Don't be a bitch about it."
"Pffff, rational fiction? You mean you take a bunch of mary sues, make them wave their dicks around, and have everyone bitch and moan as they own everything cause "muh rationality" and "everyone is dumb"?"
"You are just taking a few half-decent fics and saying they are better cause they flatter your inflated, nerdy ego."
"You call yourself rationalists, yet all you do is talk about fictional stories which have the hero behave slightly more cunning than a dead toad with dementia. Sometimes not even that."
u/PurposefulZephyr [+29] (43 minutes later)
A few more:
"It doesn't matter what others tell you. What matters is what you believe in."
While trying to tell someone about a well-known fact. "Nope. You are wrong." Guy shows you a random article from some obscure website. "See? This proves you are wrong."
"That's the way it was always done. That means it's the right way, end of story."
When disagreeing and using Wikipedia as a source. "What the hell you are talking about? Everyone here tells you it's X, not Y. Who cares what internet has to say about it."
u/CouteauBleu [+30] We are the Empire. (4 hours later)
This community makes no sense. They're trying to be "rational", but anyone who lives in the real world (your mother's basement doesn't count) realizes that it's impossible to be perfectly rational. That none of you realize that proves that you're not as smart as you think you are.
u/AmeteurOpinions [+32] Finally, everyone was working together. (5 hours later)
/r/hpmor still has more subscribers.
Edit: I highly recommend following the chain of “Idea borrowed from here” links.
u/None [+29] (5 hours later)
"Wow. You must be fun at parties."
My blood pressure just went up and I want someone to die.
u/Trips-Over-Tail [+31] Death of Crabs (25 minutes later)
Motivation is secondary to plot.
u/theo131 [+28] (36 minutes later)
Harriezer Yudkowsky.
u/anewhopeforchange [+10] (an hour later)
Harriezer Potkowsky
u/ben_oni [+4] (7 hours later)
But isn't EY basically hpmor!Quirrell, and not HPEV?
u/detrebio [+10] (10 hours later)
I thought he SI'd in Hermione
u/wren42 [+6] (20 hours later)
can't tell if this is a joke?
u/ben_oni [+3] (22 hours later)
Isn't that the point of this thread?
u/None [+6] (a day later)
He said his dude was Godric Gryffindor. "No savior hast the savior" is prolly on his business cards.
u/causalchain [+4] (10 hours later)
In one of his posts, he said that hpmor!Quirrel is only 80% of his intelligence
u/eaglejarl [+3] (a day later)
No, he's Harry. Harry even has Eliezer's sleep disorder.
u/None [+23] (3 hours later)
[deleted]
u/Frommerman [+7] (3 hours later)
"Scientists say [insert thing on which there has been exactly one study that may or may not have had statistically significant results] will [cure cancer/cause cancer/cause weight loss/encourage squirrels to brutally massacre and devour you and all your children]!"
u/WalterTFD [+20] (an hour later)
'Rational Fiction' is an oxymoron. Grow up.
u/UltraRedSpectrum [+40] (4 hours later)
I'm going to steal a gem from a true master of the art:
"Do you realize what genre cavets and aesthetic trappings are? They're the things you put in a story to evoke a feeling that 'this is cyberpunk' or 'this is high fantasy' or 'this is a coming of age story'. Things like, megacorps which don't very much care about you, or not wanting to grow up and become an adult, or a strange new world that doesn't exactly operate according to your rules of logic (for example, strange wizards who do things in strange ways?). These are things that settings live on. If you drive a monster trunk full of your 'logic and reasoning' over these things, you are failing to understand what makes these settings evocative and inspiring in the first place."
u/ben_oni [+26] (7 hours later)
While I like this, I feel it's missing the point. It's too long and thought-provoking to generate the emotional knee-jerk response I think this thread is looking for.
u/genericaccounter [+20] (13 hours later)
I will be honest. This one is one of the most annoying quotes in this entire post to me. The reason is that it was clearly written by someone who has some clue of what they were talking about but somehow missed the obvious reasons for rational fiction. A logical world with people acting with human minds has many advantages. The magic system or whatever is special about it sets as a different world, whereas the reasonable villains and others show that people are still people. The consistency of the world helps with immersion, and lets people speculate ahead regarding the plans of the characters. All of these are positives that require the logic the author of this quote hates. This person said something that sounds reasonable unless you think about for a minute and that annoys me the most. A consistent world with consistent people is plus whether you like exploring people or exploring worlds.
u/None [+10] (8 hours later)
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u/GopherAtl [+30] (15 hours later)
It has an unusually large number of periods, too.
u/nineran [+3] (17 hours later)
This was one of the most annoying posts for me.
“How can someone who sees so much be so blind?”
u/DanceRain [+15] (2 hours later)
Evolution is only a theory....
u/Frommerman [+15] (an hour later)
Physics jokes are only for snooty losers who think they're smarter than everyone else. They certainly don't belong in anything I'm going to read for fun.
u/eaglejarl [+11] (6 hours later)
u/None [+1] (7 days later)
he is somewhat right...
u/eaglejarl [+2] (7 days later)
Not really. He sets up a strawman definition of rational fiction, then assumes the premise that his strawman is bad. The 'insight' he offers is really just dressed-up trolling.
u/None [+2] (8 days later)
just because we like to read HPMOR, doesn't mean the HPMOR-Harry is not a Mary Sue...
also just because he has different opinions than you, doesn't mean he is trolling. (i'm trolling here, but not lying)
Also the use of a fallacy, doesn't mean his point is (completely) wrong.a
Personally I like to read about hypercompetent characters, but I know it is bad writing. (i disagree with his paragraphs about genres)
u/eaglejarl [+2] (10 days later)
Well, you've admitted you're just trolling so I guess it's not worth continuing the discussion. Pity. For a moment there I thought you actually had a legitimate reason to support his arguments, which would have been interesting to hear.
u/None [+1] (10 days later)
like i said i was not lying
but you a smart one, to find out i'm trolling. it's not like the context could have clued you in...
u/eternal-potato [+10] he who vegetates (9 hours later)
"Characteristics of rational fiction just describe good fiction in general."
u/ben_oni [+21] (6 hours later)
Worm is derivative crap.
EY is a fraud and MIRI is a scam.
The author of Mother of Learning is just milking his readers for as long as he can.
u/DaystarEld [+29] Pokémon Professor (7 hours later)
The author of Mother of Learning is just milking his readers for as long as he can.
While I don't necessarily think this is true, it would not surprise me at all.
(Gee this sure is a nice glass house I'm sitting in)
u/pleasedothenerdful [+4] (2 days later)
For the three or so chapters before this last one, and really right up until the end, I was starting to wonder. Now I'm hooked again.
u/DaystarEld [+2] Pokémon Professor (3 days later)
For MoL, Pokemon, or both? :P
u/pleasedothenerdful [+2] (3 days later)
MoL
u/DaystarEld [+2] Pokémon Professor (4 days later)
Yeah, I'm excited for their talk with him too. Hope it shakes things up.
u/GrafZeppelin127 [+25] (8 hours later)
I think there are a lot worse things you could say to upset Worm fans like me:
“Worm is poorly-paced, poorly-edited edgelord schlock.”
“Worm is for obsessive nerds who think a million-plus-word slog is just warming up for a sequel.”
“Taylor is a terrible protagonist and the story goes out of its way to excuse her horrible behavior.”
u/None [+12] (a day later)
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u/WilyCoyotee [+3] (2 days later)
Is Ward expected to be significantly shorter?
u/None [+3] (2 days later)
[removed]
u/WilyCoyotee [+4] (2 days later)
Up to..4.4, i think. starting at 0.1. Check it out.
u/MrCogmor [+7] (a day later)
There isn't a good reason for Taylor not to have joined the Wards before her first night out. It is dismissed in one line as bad because of teenage drama and scheduling but then she is so desperate for affection that she joins the undersiders with more teenage drama and problems. You can say unreliable narrator and someting about her father but her father her is basically a non-entity.
There are obvious problems with going undercover in a group with a thinker called Tattletale and expecting that cover to last long term. There are obvious problems with going undercover in a group when you have no official backing and indeed official disapproval. Taylor approaches Soverign Citizen level stupidity which drains a lot of sympathy.
Conflict keeps getting propped up by one dimensional villain charachters like Bakuda and the Slaughterhouse Nine.
The Leviathan fight is some bullshit. Armsmaster's plan was bullshit and shouldn't have worked at all. Leviathan may have great mobility but that shouldn't prevent Legend or Eidolan from keeping up with it and providing updating location reports. Armsmaster plans to and does fight Leviathan one and one. That is completely suicidal given how dangerous Leviathan and the other endbringers are stated to be. I don't care if he can predict or has the halberd to damage it. Leviathan should have still wiped the floor with him immediately just on its strength and speed.
At the hospital they lock Skitter into restraints because she is a villain including her broken arm. Then she gets out (no one notices her swiping the keys with bugs and the bugs are able to unlock her restraints) and moves into the next room over to find unmasked Shadow Stalker (They keep heroes and villains right next to each other. Shadow Stalker's mask is taken off and kept off for some reason. Shadow stalker is set right next to Skitter). Then she is caught by the heroes and then her team mates show up immediately (She gets restrained to her cot but not them and nobody questions this)
It has a lot more flaws but I don't want to reread it to find them.
u/GrafZeppelin127 [+5] (a day later)
“There isn't a good reason for Taylor not to have joined the Wards before her first night out. It is dismissed in one line as bad because of teenage drama and scheduling but then she is so desperate for affection that she joins the undersiders with more teenage drama and problems.”
Bear in mind Taylor is a child, and not one prone to making good decisions. She’s also much more put off of the wards by her experiences with authorities like the school, whereas the Undersiders were decidedly more anarchic, as she subconsciously likes. Also, Lisa’s a pretty excellent manipulator.
None of these are “good reasons” if your standard is “a protagonist who never makes mistakes.” They are absolutely good reasons if your standard is “people doing things consistent with their character.” A protagonist who does things because of their flaws is not the same thing as a protagonist who does things for no explained reason at all.
“There are obvious problems with going undercover in a group with a thinker called Tattletale and expecting that cover to last long term. There are obvious problems with going undercover in a group when you have no official backing and indeed official disapproval. Taylor approaches Soverign Citizen level stupidity which drains a lot of sympathy.”
It drains sympathy… because none of us have ever been arrogant, stupid, anti-authoritarian teenagers? Armsmaster is 100% correct when he raises every single one of these points to her, it’s one of the earliest indications we get that Taylor is indeed an unreliable narrator.
“Conflict keeps getting propped up by one dimensional villain charachters like Bakuda and the Slaughterhouse Nine.”
I wouldn’t call some of the Nine one-dimensional, but whatever. I suspect you’re using morally ambiguity as a shorthand for “depth” here, but I think one can absolutely be both evil and still be a well-developed character. And, not to put too fine a point on it, but shallow people and serial killers and the like absolutely do exist. Not everyone is particularly complicated.
“The Leviathan fight is some bullshit. Armsmaster's plan was bullshit and shouldn't have worked at all.”
Did you miss the part where it emphatically didn’t work at all? Armsmaster expected that his Nanothorns would be able to cut through anything, and they didn’t. He expected his predictive software to work, and it didn’t. He got his arm and leg torn off for his hubris and nearly died. Worse, Leviathan wasn’t even deterred. It took Scion’s arrival to drive him off.
Look, I get it if you don’t like the work, you’re entitled to your opinion. But your nitpicks don’t even make sense.
u/MrCogmor [+1] (a day later)
Bear in mind Taylor is a child, and not one prone to making good decisions. She’s also much more put off of the wards by her experiences with authorities like the school, whereas the Undersiders were decidedly more anarchic, as she subconsciously likes. Also, Lisa’s a pretty excellent manipulator.
Her problems with Winslow do not translate to distrust of Arcadia and sure as hell doesn't translate to an immediate distrust of the Heroes with their PR machine.
It drains sympathy… because none of us have ever been arrogant, stupid, anti-authoritarian teenagers? Armsmaster is 100% correct when he raises every single one of these points to her, it’s one of the earliest indications we get that Taylor is indeed an unreliable narrator.
I'm 19 and rather cautious. I can quite confidently say that as a teenager I was not that reckless or impulsive.
Did you miss the part where it emphatically didn’t work at all?
It worked up to the point he was basically alone with it and holding his own for a little while. A situation I just explained was impossible to arise because there would be flyers tracking it or he would just dismiss the plan in the early stages because it requires him to go toe with toe with a guy that can outfight groups of high class brutes and he is not one.
I wouldn’t call some of the Nine one-dimensional, but whatever. I suspect you’re using morally ambiguity as a shorthand for “depth” here, but I think one can absolutely be both evil and still be a well-developed character.
Yes but a lot of villains whole character can be summed in a single trauma, mind rape or dumb drive.
Siberian - Lost his daughter, somehow that made him a crazy cannibal that projects as image of daughter. No depth explored.
Shatterbird - can't really remember much about her, seems to have similar issues to Jack.
Crawler - Masochist, that is it.
Mannequin - Mind raped by Ziz
Bonesaw - Some depth. Twisted mindset associated with being a good girl, basically mind-raped by Jack and later Contessa.
Burnscar - Mind raped by her power
Cherish - Some depth, shitty person trying to take advantage of shitty circumstances.
Jack - Has narcissistic issues like Arms-master but is a villain and succeeds where arms master fails. A bit of depth but also a bit derivative.
u/GrafZeppelin127 [+3] (a day later)
Her problems with Winslow do not translate to distrust of Arcadia and sure as hell doesn't translate to an immediate distrust of the Heroes with their PR machine.
I never said it was logical, but Taylor’s mindset is made abundantly clear—she has an instinctive distrust of institutions.
I'm 19 and rather cautious. I can quite confidently say that as a teenager I was not that reckless or impulsive.
I didn’t say all teenagers were like that, but many are, and I imagine most people know or knew teenagers who are indeed reckless, anti-authoritarian, and have poor impulse control.
It worked up to the point he was basically alone with it and holding his own for a little while. A situation I just explained was impossible to arise because there would be flyers tracking it or he would just dismiss the plan in the early stages because it requires him to go toe with toe with a guy that can outfight groups of high class brutes and he is not one.
It’s certainly not “impossible.” Remember we’re talking about a story, here. Armsmaster set about trying to isolate Leviathan, and he succeeded, much to his detriment. Recall that he honestly believed that his nanothorns would kill the beast, he was in a very bad headspace at the time, and even under the best of circumstances he had an arrogance problem. The flyers couldn’t track Leviathan very reliably because A: it was raining cats and dogs, and B: Leviathan is incredibly fast. Recall that Legend, for example, can accelerate to move faster than sound, but as he accelerates, his awareness dims proportionally. Alexandria is possibly even more nimble despite being slower, but her senses aren’t as sharp as his, and Leviathan had nearly drowned her. Glory Girl has a middling Mover rating, and her top speed is 80 mph. So it’s not at all incongruous to me that Leviathan can take advantage of the confusion and slip away, considering he’s regarded as the fastest non-teleporting creature in the world.
Yes but a lot of villains whole character can be summed in a single trauma, mind rape or dumb drive.
You can sum up basically any character or their motivations like that, though. Go ahead, try. I can’t think of any character complex enough that their motivation or personality can’t be summed up laconically like that. The real factor that makes a character deep, to my mind, isn’t how simple or complex their personalities or motivations are, but rather how they engage with the world around them. Normal people can understand and relate to that much easier than they can to a simple motivation to commit murder.
u/MrCogmor [+1] (a day later)
I didn’t say all teenagers were like that, but many are, and I imagine most people know or knew teenagers who are indeed reckless, anti-authoritarian, and have poor impulse control.
Yes but they are not sympathetic
It’s certainly not “impossible.” Remember we’re talking about a story, here. Armsmaster set about trying to isolate Leviathan, and he succeeded, much to his detriment. Recall that he honestly believed that his nanothorns would kill the beast, he was in a very bad headspace at the time, and even under the best of circumstances he had an arrogance problem. The flyers couldn’t track Leviathan very reliably because A: it was raining cats and dogs, and B: Leviathan is incredibly fast. Recall that Legend, for example, can accelerate to move faster than sound, but as he accelerates, his awareness dims proportionally. Alexandria is possibly even more nimble despite being slower, but her senses aren’t as sharp as his, and Leviathan had nearly drowned her. Glory Girl has a middling Mover rating, and her top speed is 80 mph. So it’s not at all incongruous to me that Leviathan can take advantage of the confusion and slip away, considering he’s regarded as the fastest non-teleporting creature in the world.
Either Leviathan is slow enough that flyers can keep up with him or he is fast enough to bowl Armsmaster over before he even knows what hit him regardless of his predictive software and halberd.
you can sum up basically any character or their motivations like that, though. Go ahead, try. I can’t think of any character complex enough that their motivation or personality can’t be summed up laconically like that.
I can think of some but you are right it is not completely fair criticism.
The real factor that makes a character deep, to my mind, isn’t how simple or complex their personalities or motivations are, but rather how they engage with the world around them. Normal people can understand and relate to that much easier than they can to a simple motivation to commit murder.
I don't know what you are trying to say here.
u/GrafZeppelin127 [+3] (a day later)
Yes but they are not sympathetic
Perhaps not to you, but to others they might be. After all, being a teenager is one of those essentially universal experiences—at least among Worm’s intended audience of teens and young adults.
Either Leviathan is slow enough that flyers can keep up with him or he is fast enough to bowl Armsmaster over before he even knows what hit him regardless of his predictive software and halberd.
In fairness, think of Leviathan’s goals here. Sure, he can go fast enough that he could probably have spoofed Armsmaster’s software earlier than he did. But his entire schtick—and that of the Endbringers in general—is to provide a good fight, to raise up glimmers of hope just so that it hurts more when they smash that hope to smithereens. It was perfectly consistent with Leviathan’s motivations and best interests to allow Armsmaster a brief moment to shine before mercilessly crushing him. This isn’t just my interpretation, either—both the text and Word of Wildbow confirm that the Endbringers were deliberately holding back just to make a show of things.
I can think of some but you are right it is not completely fair criticim.
I’d love to hear what some of those you thought of are, then, because complex characters fascinate me.
“The real factor that makes a character deep, to my mind, isn’t how simple or complex their personalities or motivations are, but rather how they engage with the world around them.” Don't know what you are getting at here.
Basically paraphrasing this: http://yudkowsky.tumblr.com/writing/level1intelligent
Wildbow’s characters consistently think up new and brilliant ways to get ahead, or leverage their own powers, or exploit the weaknesses of others’. It’s what Yudkowsky would call the “spark of optimization,” and it really helps sell the illusion that these are real people with thoughts and desires.
u/MrCogmor [+2] (a day later)
In fairness, think of Leviathan’s goals here.
Think of Armsmaster's. A bad head space doesn't excuse an obviously suicidal and dumb plan like this especially since he actually planned it and is an adult. (Unlike Taylor when she picked a fight with Lung)
I’d love to hear what some of those you thought of are, then, because complex characters fascinate me.
Mostly characters in serialised shows where they are given multiple character arcs or evolution of character. e.g Avatar
u/GrafZeppelin127 [+3] (a day later)
A bad head space doesn't excuse an obviously suicidal and dumb plan like this
Armsmaster’s fragile mental state doesn’t excuse taking this risk, but we’re not trying to make excuses for Armsmaster’s hubristic madness, and nor is the story. I’d also note that what we learn of Endbringers later makes his actions look far dumber in hindsight, and with understanding just how far he’d fallen to get to that point. It was still dumb given what Armsmaster believed about the Endbringers then, but people do dumb things all the time and Armsmaster is certainly no exception. He’s a lot like Taylor, ironically enough—bad with impulse control, and can easily point out flaws in others but not his own biases. Eminently human failings, those.
Mostly characters in serialised shows where they are given multiple character arcs or evolution of character. e.g Avatar
Prince Zuko is arguably the most complex and well-developed character in that series, and even he and his motivations can be summed up as “hotheaded prince” and “restoring honor,” respectively. Boiling down characters like that isn’t wrong, necessarily, but it hardly captures the reasons why we build up empathy with these characters or appreciate their depth.
u/MrCogmor [+1] (a day later)
Prince Zuko is arguably the most complex and well-developed character in that series, and even he and his motivations can be summed up as “hotheaded prince” and “restoring honor,” respectively. Boiling down characters like that isn’t wrong, necessarily, but it hardly captures the reasons why we build up empathy with these characters or appreciate their depth.
The difference is that his character is actually explored but I already said my previous criticism wasn't completely fair.
u/wren42 [+2] (21 hours later)
i agree with all those statements. I'm sorry I read a ton of it but I just can't get into it. it's not rational fic at all IMO, and the pacing really is grueling.
u/GrafZeppelin127 [+5] (21 hours later)
Well, 1 and 2 are entirely subjective criticisms (which is very annoying when they are levied against fans of the work with the attitude that these opinions were objective and everyone else is just wrong), but I wrote 3 to be just plain wrong (which is a different kind of annoying). Basically the whole point of Worm is that we’re supposed to see Taylor as an extremely unreliable narrator making questionable choices, and the plot/story absolutely do not try to justify her decisions.
u/wren42 [+1] (21 hours later)
Basically the whole point of Worm is that we’re supposed to see Taylor as an extremely unreliable narrator making questionable choices
that's pretty subjective as well. she's written as a pretty typical "heart of gold caught in a bad situation" protagonist. you can read into authorial intent if you want, but saying that the "whole point" is that it's meta-ironic is a pretty big hand wave. Do you have any real evidence of this authorial intent from within the text? How is this communicated to the reader?
u/GrafZeppelin127 [+3] (21 hours later)
Well, Wildbow has stated in many different ways and at many different times that Taylor’s viewpoint is supposed to be separate from his own, and her choices are supposed to be ambiguous and not “right.” It’s not just something you can infer by looking at Taylor’s actions, or reading the interludes and comparing their POV to the Taylor chapters, though some have (looking at the We’ve Got Worm podcast there).
I wouldn’t call it meta-ironic, rather it’s just that the main character is flawed, and is meant to be flawed.
u/wren42 [+1] (21 hours later)
It’s not just something you can infer by looking at Taylor’s actions, or reading the interludes and comparing their POV to the Taylor chapters, though some have (looking at the We’ve Got Worm podcast there).
then it's not in the story. the author's external views not aligning with taylors is not the same thing as the portrayal of a character within that story.
she's written as a protagonist with good intentions who gets pushed into being a villain by her environment. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that take on a character or story, mind; but given she's supposed to be the "good guy" in the story some of her questionable actions do seem to be excused or treated lightly.
my problem with it isn't really that, though. It's how wildly unrealistic her successes are. The timeline selection deus ex only works so far; if it were a true rational fic she should be dead early on. the situations and enemies she survives are ridiculous.
u/Tokyo_X-4 [+12] (a day later)
I think you're not giving Wildbow enough credit here. Not only is Taylor obviously morally questionable from basically square 1, but she also experiences a huge amount of realistic losses right on top of the other really early in the story.
In terms of Taylor's character itself, you don't even need to look further than 1.01:
It would be so easy, so easy to just go Carrie on the school. To give the trio their just desserts and make them regret what they had put me through: the vicious e-mails, the trash they’d upended over my desk, the flute –my mother’s flute– they’d stolen from my locker...
I was all too aware that I’d get caught and arrested if I attacked my fellow students. There were three teams of superheroes and any number of solo heroes in the city. I didn’t really care. The thought of my father seeing the aftermath on the news, his disappointment in me, his shame? That was more daunting, but it still didn’t outweigh the anger and frustration.
Except I was better than that.
Right off the bat we get a glimpse into her violent tendencies. She wants to take revenge. She doesn't even care much about the opinion of her own father (one of the most sympathetic characters in the book) - the only thing holding her back from "going Carrie" on the school is her belief in her own moral superiority. For the rest of the story up until Arc 8, we keep seeing increasingly questionable decisions on her part that lead to direct punishment (using immense force against lung, coming up with the hostage plan at the bank, antagonizing Armsmaster because she can't listen to his perfectly reasonable advice, taking out Lung's eyeballs, using unsportsmanlike like tactics against the heroes at the Gala, and finally, burning the letter to Miss Militia) throughout each of which she maintains that she is making the right decision, even though she later faces direct, well-foreshadowed consequences of each. None of these are excused by anything other than her internal monologue. Taylor was never doing "the right thing" as in the objectively correct decision, and an observant reader would have noticed this as well - it's just so easy to be suckered in and accept her narration as the objective facts. Her villainy isn't subtextual, it's literal.
As for early Deus Ex Machina, have any in mind? I think the Undersiders showing up against Lung was justified very well by the story in all respects, and it would be silly to dismiss it for not properly foreshadowing their existence in the first arc. The bank was nearly a flawless operation, but it made sense in context. Bakuda's toe rings were foreshadowed about a chapter after she first stepped on screen, and besides, in this fight Taylor takes heavy injuries and gets a concussion that's used to spur yet another plot forward. Lung's vulnerability to Newter's drug bodily fluids was foreshadowed in the meeting in Somer's Rock when Newter was introduced, and then again in Gregor's Interlude, I think. And in each of these early victories it's pretty explicitly stated that Taylor is hunkering down somewhere like fifty feet away while her bugs do all of the work. She's actually rarely in direct combat, and whenever she is it's treated like a very big deal. With Rachel she got stitches in her arm, in the bank she got knocked out with a fire extinguisher, with Bakuda she hurt her limbs again and got a concussion (which took a good week of recovery and never really got better until a bit after Leviathan), Oni Lee nearly decapitated her, etc.
I could go on forever. Just know that there are more details in Worm than you remember. All of it is in the text if you aren't in a hurry to get it over with.
u/wren42 [+1] (a day later)
having losses or injuries doesn't balance out the victories. the world isn't some cosmic karma scale. the question is whether it's plausible that the series of fights she won/drew could all turn out as they did. honestly the list of injuries (bakuda, oni lee) just reinforces how she continues to have close calls where she should simply lose and die.
While there are individual explanations within each scene, there's no plausible justification for why she continues to survive and be successful in general even when facing melee specialists in close combat.
in terms of specific deus ex machinas, they ABOUND. I alluded to a big one earlier: Grue's second trigger event with bonesaw. This is an egregious cliffhanger scenario with the whole team knocked out or helpless and about to be cut up, and one team member just suddenly gets extra powers.
Look, the story works as a dramatic superhero tale. it doesn't HAVE to be a rational fic to be what it is. it leans on narrative necessity and set pieces, makes heavy use of tropes and deus ex machina - and these are all acceptable tools to create an entertaining story. But it doesn't stand up to being a true rational fic.
u/Tokyo_X-4 [+3] (2 days later)
I think you misunderstand what Deus Ex Machina means and why the trope is bad in the first place. For something to be a Deus Ex Machina it needs to fit a couple criteria:
- It was not foreshadowed, or the reader did not know to expect it was possible.
- It was inconsistent with the plot as it was portrayed previously. (e.g. a god descending from the heavens to solve the plot even when they had opportunity to do it previously, and did not take it)
- Relies too much on serendipity, and the power of cosmic coincidence.
- It solves all of the characters problems.
Grue's trigger fits exactly one of these criteria - number four. We know about second triggers from the dialogue about Narwhal in Gregor's interlude and at the beginning of arc 8, specifically that it comes from a stimulus that is worse than the original trigger event by a large margin. So we know it's possible beforehand. It's not inconsistent with the plot or too coincidental, either - we know for a fact that Grue is disassembled into bits and stashed into a freezer, fully conscious and in pain. This is introduced to us before the others are even in serious jeopardy. So even if Grue's trigger is convenient to the characters, it's not "god being lowered from the rafters" convenient. And moreover, it doesn't immediately solve all of their problems - it scares off Bonesaw and gives them a chance to retaliate, but Grue is left permanently scarred, the Slaughterhouse 9 is still in town, and their worst offense has yet to come.
I'd like to know what you think a justification is other than "individual explanations within each scene". Ignoring those individual explanations is tantamount to ignoring evidence for something because you believe it to be impossible - just because an outside retrospective view makes success seem unlikely doesn't mean that a real, plausible explanation for why it happened is nonexistent. I would understand saying that if these moments were off screen or narrated after the fact, but they weren't. You can't say that "coincidences are piling up" when individually most of these coincidences make sense in context and aren't really coincidental at all. You can call them contrived - they almost certainly are - but rational fiction doesn't care about contrivances so long as they fit the rest of the rules of the genre. Otherwise things like the magic in HPMOR would automatically invalidate the story. I feel like Worm very safely falls within the boundaries of rational fiction.
(Also, I've been meaning to say this, but I avoided it in the main essay because it was a little off-tone: saying Worm relies on tropes of the superhero genre is like saying Game of Thrones relies too much on the tropes of historical fantasy. It's the kind of completely idiotic assumption you could only make from a bubble that has never read a story that relies too much on tropes, or doesn't know how to distinguish genre reconstruction from the original genre itself. Worm takes superhero tropes, takes them apart and tries to reconstruct them to fit a setting that makes sense as a coherent whole - if you didn't grasp this immediately, you either didn't read Worm properly, or you have never watched a Marvel movie in your life. Watch those and then tell me what a Deus Ex Machina in a superhero story looks like.)
u/wren42 [+1] (3 days later)
"don't understand Deus ex" and " didn't read worm properly" .
Lol no. Grue got a new power suddenly through no action of his own that saved the day at the last second. That's the fucking definition of a Deus ex machina. Your "requirements" are increasingly shrill biased justifications because you like the story and don't want to admit it's flawed in any way.
Done with this pedantic shit. All you've managed to do is make me dislike worm more as I rethink about it.
u/GrafZeppelin127 [+3] (21 hours later)
She’s not supposed to be the “good guy,” though. How Taylor views and rationalizes her own decisions through a haze of her own biases is very different from how the plot and other characters treat her. Many people empathize strongly with her and think she is the “good guy,” but I see that more as the story doing its job well.
And it’s fine if your problem is more with the scrapes she gets out of. If that breaks your immersion, you have every reason to not like the story. But it didn’t break my immersion, and I think that there was adequate explanation/reasons things turned out the way they did. Rarely did I get the feeling that she’d be spared just because the plot demanded it with little other justification or reason behind it.
u/GrafZeppelin127 [+1] (21 hours later)
As for whether Worm is really a rational fic, the best way I’ve heard it explained is that Worm is a rational fic, but not a rationalist fic. Its purpose is not to educate on rationality nor science, or even good storywriting. It’s a character- and plot-driven work, and in my opinion, that brings much-needed diversity to the loosely-defined “genre.”
u/wren42 [+10] (21 hours later)
it's no more rationalist than any other grimdark superhero comic book.
Characteristics of Rational Fiction:
Nothing happens solely because 'the plot requires it'. If characters do (or don't do) something, there must be a plausible reason.
this is the cardinal rule, and it is violated constantly. the plot is structured as a series of Boss Battles, with build up and world filler in between. The protagonist goes into every fight as a scrappy underdog, and yet comes out unscathed, even in ABSURDLY ridiculous odds.
Characters are tropey, and Worfed constantly - the next Big Bad is always set up by other characters raving about how scary they are, and mini-baddies getting their asses kicked, only to be put down by a TEENAGE GIRL with a power that has extremely limited combat applications.
In a rational fic with consistent rules and realism, she should not have survived any of the major fights, from Lung to Armsmaster to Hookwolf and on and on. Every fight is increasingly implausible, and after a while I just became numb to the whole thing. I'd spend the fights waiting for her to stumble into a scrappy victory, and the time between fights trudging through all the setup for the next one. It lost all the tension and drama.
That said, the worldbuilding is great. it's a fantastic setting with great characters and creative powers. It has a ton of promise as a universe; it's just not rational fic, which is fine.
u/GrafZeppelin127 [+8] (21 hours later)
Eh. I disagree. I think the worldbuilding is a big part of what makes it a rational fic, and from my perspective, rational fic is not at all the same thing as literary realism, nor should it try to be. Because then that would mean there was no actual story in many cases. You always have to accept at least a little bit of compromise to make things interesting.
And that definition of rational fiction is a bit basic, but even there I’d argue that pretty much everything in Worm happens for a clear and well-established reason, but whether you find those reasons immersive or plausible is another matter entirely. The story both A: has an internal logic and B: follows its internal logic consistently, which in my opinion makes it a rational fic, if not necessarily a rationalist fic.
Of course, Worm mostly stands out because the other stories in its genre are the polar opposite of rational fiction. They have no logic, internal or otherwise.
u/wren42 [+8] (23 hours later)
worldbuilding has nothing to do with rational fiction. worldbuilding is part of any fantasy or sci fi narrative and is not by itself sufficient to make a story rational.
I am not demanding realism in the sense that the world must conform strictly to reality - obviously I'm perfectly willing to accept super powers or magic as part of the story. What rational fic demands is strict realism within the world it describes.
If a villain or hero is described as a terrifying, cold and relentless killer who has defeated countless other capes and eluded top law enforcement for years, then an expectation is set up within the rules of the world that they be that powerful.
If that same villain is then defeated by a teenage girl who is not rated as especially proficient at combat and doesn't have a power that gives her exceptional survivability or offensive abilities, those expectations have been broken, and the logic of the world is not consistent.
Lets put it simply:
The endbringer that attacks brockton bay kills dozens of capes and holds off hundreds more, including ridiculously overpowered S-tier heroes.
Armsmaster nearly defeats that same endbringer in 1 on 1 combat.
Taylor defeats Armsmaster, TWICE.
The reader is left going "WHAT??" There should be a transitivity of relative power here.
You can do the same thing with the slaughterhouse nine. They shred through other capes in increasingly ridiculous Worf scenes, yet taylor manages to outfight some in direct combat, and outmaneuver the group. Again, Mannequin beats Armsmaster (with caveats, he didn't have suit, I get it) then Taylor beats mannequin despite his being immune to insect bites and peper spray, her main forms of attack. It's completely unbelievable.
One of the most important aspects of "things happening for a reason" in terms of rational fic is that the story does not leverage Deus Ex Machina to drive the plot. Worm makes heavy use of this trope to let Taylor survive ridiculous situations and move the plot in the direction the author wants.
This is fine for normal fiction. You admit Worm is a character and narrative driven story, and this indicates also what it is not. Not everything has to be rational fic. Worm can be an enjoyable story without fitting that genre definition.
It does have creativity and some rational elements in how it approaches powers and worldbuilding, and I think that's why many /r/rational folk like it. The way powers are used is clever, and the world is interesting. That rigor unfortunately doesn't extend to the story itself, which is why it falls short of being a rational fic, but it's not necessary for it to be.
u/GrafZeppelin127 [+9] (a day later)
“worldbuilding has nothing to do with rational fiction. worldbuilding is part of any fantasy or sci fi narrative and is not by itself sufficient to make a story rational.”
True, but I’m using the term “worldbuilding” loosely, as shorthand for “this is not a story with radioactive spiders and immortal telekinesis mutants.” I consider it rational because it A: has an internal logic that makes sense and B: follows this logic consistently. That’s all.
“If a villain or hero is described as a terrifying, cold and relentless killer who has defeated countless other capes and eluded top law enforcement for years, then an expectation is set up within the rules of the world that they be that powerful. If that same villain is then defeated by a teenage girl who is not rated as especially proficient at combat and doesn't have a power that gives her exceptional survivability or offensive abilities, those expectations have been broken, and the logic of the world is not consistent.”
I think this is not an accurate way to look at this. Why? Because in the context of the story, there’s a difference between how a thing is perceived, and what it actually is. Taylor’s power is actually quite good, but it’s routinely underestimated. It’s a mistake overconfident characters in the story make, and helps explain why many of them are defeated. And it’s not just Taylor—Jack Slash is considered to have an underwhelming power, but it’s actually much more than it seems, which is how he was able to build up such a record.
“The endbringer that attacks brockton bay kills dozens of capes and holds off hundreds more, including ridiculously overpowered S-tier heroes.
Armsmaster nearly defeats that same endbringer in 1 on 1 combat.
Taylor defeats Armsmaster, TWICE.
The reader is left going "WHAT??" There should be a transitivity of relative power here.”
Again, in the context of the story, Armsmaster deployed an experimental weapon against Leviathan (which didn’t even work), Leviathan was deliberately jobbing the fight, Armsmaster had the time to set up his predictive software and isolate the battlefield, and Armsmaster STILL lost badly and nearly died.
By contrast, he was never, at any point, trying to kill Skitter, but she went all-out against him. That’s quite an imbalance, especially considering Armsmaster consistently underestimated the scope and diversity of Taylor’s power. Also, calling them “defeats” may be a bit of a stretch—Skitter managed to get away. Trainwreck defeated Armsmaster after Skitter slipped away from the gallery attack intact, and she used human shields at the confrontation at the school.
“You can do the same thing with the slaughterhouse nine. They shred through other capes in increasingly ridiculous Worf scenes, yet taylor manages to outfight some in direct combat, and outmaneuver the group. Again, Mannequin beats Armsmaster (with caveats, he didn't have suit, I get it) then Taylor beats mannequin despite his being immune to insect bites and peper spray, her main forms of attack. It's completely unbelievable.”
Perhaps in your opinion, but Taylor’s beating at Mannequin’s hands speaks for itself in my opinion. He underestimated her, and she forced him to retreat at great cost. Also, Mannequin is not the entirety of the Nine, he has his own strengths and weaknesses. Taylor hardly proved effective against Manton/the Siberian, or even Jack and Bonesaw.
“One of the most important aspects of "things happening for a reason" in terms of rational fic is that the story does not leverage Deus Ex Machina to drive the plot. Worm makes heavy use of this trope to let Taylor survive ridiculous situations and move the plot in the direction the author wants.”
Deus Ex Machina implies that the salvation was inexplicable and not previously alluded to or shown. I frankly don’t think it applies here, as my previous examples show. There’s almost always a reason things happened the way they did, and in my opinion pretty damn good reasons at that. The latter is the most important factor, I think, and the fact that it also happens to serve the themes of the plot and characters just doesn’t spoil that for me.
u/wren42 [+4] (a day later)
oh my god you shouldn't even mention bonesaw lol. there was a deus ex if ever there was one.
look, there being "reasons" in a story for how things happened isn't the same as the story being reasonable or rational. If the enemies Taylor defeated were as easily bested by "underestimating" as you suggest, they would never have gotten where the were.
for SOME villains to have an overblown reputation is plausible. for her to face the biggest named heroes and villains again and again and come out on top is just railroading. that the narrative gives excuses for this in the context of the scene isn't sufficient to make it a rational story, or set it apart from any other superhero narrative. There are reasons why the Xmen and avengers win too within their stories. that doesn't make them rational fic.
u/GrafZeppelin127 [+1] (a day later)
Seems to me that what sets apart an excuse from a reason is whether it breaks your immersion, which is an eminently subjective thing. “Narrative convenience” doesn’t matter very much to me, so long as there are reasons besides, but it clearly does to you.
For example, saying “If the enemies Taylor defeated were as easily bested by "underestimating" as you suggest, they would never have gotten where the were” only makes sense if you put it in the context of the story. If YOU were writing Worm, you might have done things differently for different reasons, but the fact that this isn’t what happened does not necessarily make the reasons why it happened invalid. And I’m not saying that underestimating Taylor is necessarily a make-or-break factor in any of her fights. Rather, underestimating Taylor is a make-or-break factor in whether the READER accepts the outcome of her fights.
In other words, if you consider Taylor’s power to be deceptively quite strong, like I do, the outcomes of her fights become a lot more plausible. Likewise, if you’re looking at the same reasons and logic but working under the assumption that Taylor’s powers are relatively weak or useless, it’s not going to seem plausible that she can survive as long as she did.
u/wren42 [+3] (a day later)
I'm looking at objectively the powers she is shown to have, and the powers of her opponents.
She consistently fights stronger opponents and wins or draws. This is a fact.
This is improbable. Improbable events should be explained in a rational story.
There is no explanation offered for why Taylor is exceptionally good or lucky at besting stronger opponents.
A series of individual coincidences or reasons why any specific fight went her way does not suffice. It is the TREND that matters. This should be plain to any bayesian analysis.
The reader must be able to ask "is this outcome likely, given the conditions and context I'm given?" For worm, this answer is no. The story relies on coincidence and improbable outcomes.
This is probably the most rigorous definition of a rational plotline, now that I think about it. Does it conform to probability theory given the context and constraints provided?
There is no plausible explanation for why things in general turn out like they do for Taylor except, "the narrative demands it." This is typical for non rational fiction, and anathema to real rational fiction.
u/GrafZeppelin127 [+1] (a day later)
“I'm looking at objectively the powers she is shown to have, and the powers of her opponents.”
Define “stronger.” In Worm, powers work on anything but a linear scale of strength. It’s more akin to chess, or rock-paper-scissors. Or, to mix metaphors further, you can say the Bismarck is “stronger” than a teeny little biplane carrying a torpedo, but in Worm as in real life, pure “strength” isn’t everything in determining the outcome of a fight.
“She consistently fights stronger opponents and wins or draws. This is a fact.”
Actually, the most common outcome when Taylor finds herself arrayed against a stronger opponent such as Armsmaster, the Siberian, or Behemoth is that she either manages to flee, fails outright, doesn’t pick a fight in the first place, or teams up with others to fight them on the most favorable terms she can manage. Taylor is rarely shown to tackle any opponent singlehandedly, aside from unpowered thugs and capes at a huge disadvantage.
“There is no explanation offered for why Taylor is exceptionally good or lucky at besting stronger opponents.”
Probably the single closest thing to this argument actually being accurate is when Coil tries to kill Taylor, or when Taylor kills Alexandria singlehandedly. In the former, the text itself explains why and how she escaped. In the latter, it’s not really a Deus Ex Machina, because A: Taylor was far away from Alexandria at the time, not in arm’s reach, and B: Alexandria’s weakness to suffocation was foreshadowed at least twice before in the Leviathan and Echidna arcs. Now, you may or may not find these explanations satisfactory in a literary or probabilistic sense, but you can’t deny that they exist, and that the story is being consistent with its own internal logic (regardless of whether you agree with that logic).
u/wren42 [+3] (a day later)
Now, you may or may not find these explanations satisfactory in a literary or probabilistic sense, but you can’t deny that they exist, and that the story is being consistent with its own internal logic
again, the most important point from my last comment was that it's the trend that matters, not individual incidents. If by coincidence and scrappiness a hero wins against the odds, it's just another heroic story.
If this happens five, ten, twenty times in the same story, it starts to become a pattern. In this case, individual explanations for why EACH event occurred are no longer sufficient. The narrative must explain the pattern as a whole, or cease to be rational.
u/GrafZeppelin127 [+1] (a day later)
And even if you accept that there is a pattern of things going Taylor’s way, which I don’t necessarily think is borne out by the text to any unusual or unexplained degree, you are basically left with two options: either the story is indeed breaking its own internal logic in the general sense, or the odds that things turned out the way they did are not nearly so implausible and the story is indeed obeying its internal logic. I believe the latter, for the most part.
u/wren42 [+3] (a day later)
or the odds that things turned out the way they did are not nearly so implausible and the story is indeed obeying its internal logic
but a reasonable explanation for this trend isn't offered within the story. the point of consistent internal logic is that it needs to be explicit. you can't just magically change the probabilities and say the world's logic explains it if no explanation is given.
u/GrafZeppelin127 [+2] (a day later)
There are plenty of offered textual explanations. First and foremost, Taylor is not nearly as weak as everyone else makes her out to be at first. That ought to change the numbers in her favor right off. Second, Coil was sheltering her and the Undersiders for her entire early career, barring the Lung fight where she would have died if not for Tattletale and the Undersiders’ intervention. Also, Dinah Alcott claims that when the end of the world comes within two to five years, Taylor is always there. Literally always, in some form or another. This heavily implies that she is a key point on Contessa’s preferred Path to Victory, and as we later see, she does prove pivotal in the battle against Zion.
u/wren42 [+3] (a day later)
all narrative handwaving, sorry. relying on "fate" and "timelines" retroactively is really thin. basically saying "the story demands she survives so she does." this is the opposite of rational fic.
also, fwiw, Coil's power is a limited explanation as well. he's only picking between two worlds, and is not expressly looking out for her wellbeing in every choice. he's not an adequate explanation for why she's successful, except in the case of her engagement with Armsmaster, where she wouldn't have gone in at all if they wouldn't have been successful.
u/GrafZeppelin127 [+1] (a day later)
Call it narrative handwaving if you like, but it IS a textual explanation and it does exist within the story, so it is entirely consistent with the established internal logic of the story, which has been my whole point all along.
Besides which, this mostly happened later in the story. Earlier, according to Word of Wildbow, he’d rolled dice to determine who would survive the Leviathan fight, Taylor included—which is why the deaths of Kaiser and Dauntless in that fight seemed so shocking and abrupt. If Taylor had also died, the narrative would have shifted over to Aegis, Faultline, or Panacea.
u/wren42 [+3] (a day later)
the narrative demanding a specific result post facto is not evidence a bayesian analysis would accept as increasing the prior likelihood of an event occuring. you are basically just saying "the story requires X to happen, so this happens, and this is 'consistent internal logic.'" This is not the same thing as "the story offers a set of rules and context, and the natural outcome of those rules is X."
the dice thing is a neat factoid, and I respect it if true, but not really relevant to my point.
I don't think we're going to convince each other, but my position remains that Worm is narrative driven, and not a rational fic.
u/GrafZeppelin127 [+1] (a day later)
the narrative demanding a specific result post facto is not evidence a bayesian analysis would accept as increasing the prior likelihood of an event occuring.
How do you even define “post facto?” If you assume that Worm was basically complete in the author’s head prior to being serialized—with everything planned out ahead of time to be a certain way to conform to a plot—then how is it different from any other novel? Yudkowsky even says that it’s an author’s prerogative to “cheat” by being able to jump forwards and backwards in time. What matters is if the plot makes sense in the sequence as it is written, not as it is conceived by the author.
Even so, Worm was not actually written like this. Upon starting, Wildbow had finalized most of the worldbuilding and characterization, but not the actual plot. That flowed much more organically, and could have followed many different possible paths depending on how certain things turned out. Worm is a truly serialized work, not just a very large book that happened to be released in installments.
you are basically just saying "the story requires X to happen, so this happens, and this is 'consistent internal logic.'" This is not the same thing as "the story offers a set of rules and context, and the natural outcome of those rules is X."
Not at all. I’m saying that the fact that X serving the story and also being a logical consequence of prior conditions is not mutually exclusive. It can be both.
I don't think we're going to convince each other, but my position remains that Worm is narrative driven, and not a rational fic.
If the events of the story were not already given sufficient explanation through worldbuilding and foreshadowing PRIOR to those events occurring, I might agree with you. As it happens, I don’t see anything in Worm where some later event just blatantly contradicts what we were informed about the world from the very first page.
u/wren42 [+1] (a day later)
I’m saying that the fact that X serving the story and also being a logical consequence of prior conditions is not mutually exclusive. It can be both.
but it ain't.
again, taylor's chain of success is not justified by the rules and context given. invoking some ultimate fate timeline hokum isn't rational fic.
u/GrafZeppelin127 [+1] (a day later)
Except it’s not “hokum” in the context of the story, and it’s only one of many reasons Taylor gets where she does. You can dislike that the story contains Thinkers and Precogs, but that doesn’t make the story inconsistent with itself for having them.
u/wren42 [+1] (3 days later)
The existence of precogs isn't an excuse for unrealistic events. You don't just get to say " well this was predicted so it has to occur that way therefor it's probable and consistent." Plotting needs to explain the events themselves.
u/GrafZeppelin127 [+1] (3 days later)
Except that’s not at all how precogs work in the story. Dinah, for example, gives odds in terms of “Y given X,” so characters might do X or try Z instead based on those odds.
u/waylandertheslayer [+3] (2 days later)
You can do the same thing with the slaughterhouse nine. They shred through other capes in increasingly ridiculous Worf scenes, yet taylor manages to outfight some in direct combat, and outmaneuver the group. Again, Mannequin beats Armsmaster (with caveats, he didn't have suit, I get it) then Taylor beats mannequin despite his being immune to insect bites and peper spray, her main forms of attack. It's completely unbelievable.
Warning to anyone who wandered this far down the discussion but doesn't want any spoilers: there's lots in here.
The S9 are explicitly stated multiple times to be constantly losing members. The impressive thing is that the organisation lasts so long, but the individuals in it drop like flies. The members who have lasted a long time are the Siberian, who's literally invulnerable (Manton isn't, but he's protected by Cauldron); Bonesaw, who's stupidly durable and has the second-best medical power in the whole setting from what we see; Jack himself, who has a really strong Trump ability that makes him a threat to Contessa; and Crawler, whose power is basically that he recovers from almost any damage. Of those, Crawler is killed by the Protectorate in BB, and Dragon kills Manton.
Mannequin doesn't beat Armsmaster 'with caveats' - Armsmaster's a Tinker, so without access to any equipment he's physically just a regular guy.
The S9 in general are mostly scary because they strike and disappear. They can't stand up to a whole city's worth of capes, and they don't. When they go toe-to-toe with other capes, they tend to either outnumber them, outgun them, or otherwise stack the deck in their favour first. The scary thing about the S9 isn't how strong they are, it's all the collateral they cause and how hard it is to put them down for good.
u/Kishoto [+2] (3 days later)
Armsmaster nearly defeats that same endbringer in 1 on 1 combat
That...is not true in the sense. People felt hope in that scene and so when read, it seemed as if that was the case. But Armsmaster didn't even come close to even kinda-sorta defeating Leviathan. This was purely a misperception. You can argue whether it was a valid misperception, based on the data they had available, but it certainly was one. Leviathan came nowhere close to losing to Armsmaster, and that's considering that Armsmaster spent years preparing for this particular engagement
u/eaglejarl [+2] (a day later)
I agree with everything you've said except one nitpick: power does not have to be transitive. cf Rock/Paper/Scissors
That's definitely a nitpick in this case since Taylor should have lost to almost every cape she fought. Also, a story loses the "rational fiction" tag the minute it requires a hate plague of evil mind-control worms in order for its premise to work.
Other than that,
u/wren42 [+1] (a day later)
correct, it does not HAVE to be, you can have RPS situations. But taylor's power isn't a direct counter to most of her opponenets abilities; she wins despite a power disadvantage, not because of it. IE - outmaneuvering armsmaster in close quarters combat when he's set up specific countermeasures to her abilities.
u/Kishoto [+1] (3 days later)
and yet comes out unscathed
Unscathed can hardly define what Taylor comes out as in most of her big fights. Unless you said "unscathed" but you really meant "alive". In which case, I point out to you that despite the lethality of so many of the powers we come across, most superhero fights don't end in death (it would be a waste of characters if every single engagement ended in someone dying). However a good chunk of them do end with multiple deaths, especially the fights with the walking WMD's.
Especially considering that Wildbow established in-universe that there's a reason most of these fights don't end in deaths; the consequences are that much worse for everyone that wants to stay within the lines.
u/None [+4] (8 hours later)
[removed]
u/ben_oni [+6] (9 hours later)
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (2 days later)
Ooh, you do not get to diss MoL! Let's see any of its detractors could keep writing a story for that long at all! Must be about as long as Harry Potter by now.
u/None [+29] (37 minutes later)
EY is a hack who writes bad HP fanfic.
u/traverseda [+17] With dread but cautious optimism (2 hours later)
Ehhh..... I mean if that's what gets the job done...
u/therealflinchy [+11] (19 hours later)
would stating the truth really piss anyone off?
u/Flashbunny [+19] (4 hours later)
"You're all just idiots convinced some future Basilisk AI is going to torture you all forever for not shilling hard enough!"
u/None [+5] (5 hours later)
Well, that's gotten my BP up. Better then coffee!
u/therealflinchy [+5] (19 hours later)
i read that as "basilisk points" and nodded in agreement.
u/lordcirth [+10] (3 days later)
[meta] I'm so confused, do I upvote things that piss me off or that don't?
u/696e6372656469626c65 [+7] I think, therefore I am pretentious. (6 hours later)
Version 1:
"One of the things I hate about rationalists is how confident they are in their ideas, even when said ideas are dead wrong. For example, they think [insert rationalist thought here], when it's fucking obvious that [insert flawed rejoinder that takes about five minutes of thought to refute]."
Version 2:
"One of the things I hate about rationalists is how confident they are in their ideas, even when said ideas are dead wrong. For example, they think [insert rationalist thought here], which is obvious bullshit."
u/crivtox [+3] Closed Time Loop Enthusiast (a day later)
One of the things I hate about rationalists is how confident they are in their ideas , instead of respecting other people's opinions like[insert crazy completely factual and non fuzzy belief here].
u/crivtox [+2] Closed Time Loop Enthusiast (a day later)
One of the things I hate about rationalists is how confident they are in their ideas, don't they realize thats just their opinion.
u/Ridingh00d [+5] Ankh-Morpork City Watch (4 hours later)
75% of the 'rational' fics on here are harry potter and/or anime...
u/None [+6] (14 hours later)
Anime is worse than western animation.
Obsessive sytematisation isn't the same as realism.
In real life social skills are more important than bayesian statistics
u/nineran [+6] (17 hours later)
This is obviously wrong.
[no reasoning or evidence follows]
u/TheEngineer923 [+6] (20 hours later)
Sin (x) = x
u/Ev0nix [+6] (a day later)
/r/rational user:"But I shouldn't have to explain myself! I'm right!"
Edit: "But why do you worship athiesim? Don't you know Satan is the Devil?"
u/keeper52 [+4] (13 hours later)
I can see why these stories would be popular among Kegan 4s who are still on their way to getting metarationality.
u/KingMako [+5] Unlicensed Archrationalist (5 hours later)
"Life is not a puzzle, all of your protagonists are arrogant assholes, and we're all going to die. Get over yourselves."
u/None [+3] (a day later)
"Life is a journey to be experienced, not a problem to be solved."
u/crivtox [+5] Closed Time Loop Enthusiast (23 hours later)
"You cant prove that (insert crazy belief here) ins't true, so you should be more open minded "
"Science cant explain everything , because science its about things that you can measure , so science cant explain feelings like love, like say 3.4 grams of love ,it doesn't make sense,therefore souls exist". "Rational fiction , isn't that like one of those groups of teenager fanfiction writers that think that dark and angsty means realistic"
u/Ev0nix [+4] (a day later)
You talk big but ultiamitly you are all no better than any other shiftless cogs that make up modern society, you tell tales and build tall unsteady semilogical constructs but these tend to be neither precursor or inspiration for action but rather an excuse not to, to put it off indefinitely and without connection to action "Rationalisim" is no better or diffrent than any other vice such as alcohol, religion, social nets, escapist media or any of the rest of the ways to convince yourself that your base habits, what you were going to do anyway, have meaning aside from exstending life for it's own sake, and you know you arn't going to change.
u/pleasedothenerdful [+3] (2 days later)
"Frequentism and Bayesianism don't seem that different to me."
u/None [+3] (6 hours later)
Nothing will convince me that God doesn't exist!
u/crivtox [+2] Closed Time Loop Enthusiast (23 hours later)
Nothing will convince me of (insert coherent belief here)
u/None [+3] (a day later)
"If we're really talking about superhumanly intelligent artificial beings, I'd really have to question the purpose of humanity in that world."
I'm only paraphrasing this omnicidal shit of a deep learning postdoc a little since I can't remember exactly what he said last Friday. When he uploads the lecture video in a few weeks I'll be able to get the quote and we'll see if we can't have him arrested.
u/muns4colleg [+3] (2 days later)
Hufflepuff is the only Hogwarts house worth joining because it's the only one not that wouldn't be realistically packed to the brim with douchebags.
u/thrawnca [+3] Carbon-based biped (2 days later)
HJPEV has, as the Sorting Hat pointed out, a healthy respect for Hufflepuff. I don't think too many people would be angered by this.
u/SimoneNonvelodico [+2] Dai-Gurren Brigade (5 days later)
I don't think anyone expects Ravenclaw to be packed to the brim with douchebags. Slytherin and Gryffindor totally would be. Ravenclaw would be packed to the brim with barely socially functioning nerds.
u/VegasLights07 [+2] (a day later)
"You can't prove space because you haven't been up there"
u/None [+2] (a day later)
"Just because you drone on about 'utilitarianism' doesn't make Kyubee the good guy."
u/Yama951 [+2] (5 days later)
"My Immortal is the perfect example of rational fiction."
u/None [+1] (8 days later)
"You're a cult."
u/Ev0nix [+1] (3 months later)
"Rationalism? Oh! You mean Scientology!"
u/muns4colleg [-1] (a day later)
Workers of the world, unite.
u/None [+6] (a day later)
Nah dude, I love that one. We have nothing to lose but our chains, and a world to win!