[HN Gopher] Why read Dostoevsky? A programmer's perspective
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Why read Dostoevsky? A programmer's perspective
Author : fhur
Score : 194 points
Date : 2022-09-30 09:15 UTC (1 days ago)
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| zigman1 wrote:
| As someone coming from social sciences, I agree with author's
| assessment that scientific method used in academia isn't suitable
| in explaining human nature or behaviour. However, a lot of at
| least sociologists are aware of that. I would suggest to author
| to read Wallerstein's Herritage of Sociology [1]. Wallerstein
| thinks that social sciences had to imitate the method of natural
| sciences in order to survive (meaning to get the necessary
| funding).
|
| I'm out of time right now, but if I remember I'll write more
| about it in the afternoon. Wallerstein and Braudel are one of the
| few authors that influenced me the most during my studies and
| changed the way I perceive both Sociology as a subject and
| society around me. Couldn't recommend them more.
| florg wrote:
| I guess
|
| [1]
| https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0011392199047001002
|
| with the option to download the PDF directly.
| gregcoombe wrote:
| Tolstoy also has a lot to share about programming. "Happy
| families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its
| own way" is a clear recommendation to use status codes as return
| values instead of boolean success/fail.
| holri wrote:
| One can learn not only from books, but from all forms of great
| art and minds. For example: "Music Is a Higher Revelation Than
| All Wisdom and Philosophy", L.v. Beethoven
| hprotagonist wrote:
| "It's impossible for me to say one word about all that music
| has meant to me in my life. How, then, can I hope to be
| understood?"
|
| wittgenstein
| scop wrote:
| I only read nonfiction until I was diagnosed with cancer.
|
| After that diagnosis, I have almost exclusively read fiction.
| pythko wrote:
| I wish the author the best on their reading journey! I feel like
| this article shares a valuable experience, and I would encourage
| anyone who's on the fence or who views literature as a waste of
| time to give it an earnest try.
|
| Jumping straight into the classics can be hard due to the
| differences in language, cultural assumptions, and even just the
| fact that some of them are over-hyped, and it's tough to enjoy a
| book on its own terms when it's presented as "one of the best
| books ever."
|
| Find some recommendations on the internet, go to the library, and
| check out a couple. If they don't strike your fancy, don't worry
| about it, and move on to the next recommendation until you find
| something you connect with and you want to keep reading.
| dvko wrote:
| While I agree Dostoevsky is worth reading for most, some of the
| author's statements made me cringe a bit. Like "reading fiction
| is mostly a waste of time", "knowledge as a tool to gain an
| advantage over others" and "Communist Russia's collapse due to
| Marxism"... I presume the author is either somewhat young or a
| programmer (due to his lack of nuance). Or both.
| fithisux wrote:
| young or a programmer or a capitalist, probably the last two.
| rodolphoarruda wrote:
| I began reading fiction, science fiction, this year at the age
| 47. I started with the first book of Dune (out of 6) and now
| after almost 2000 pages read, I can tell it has been a life
| changing experience for me to the point I can't no longer watch
| TV series or even Sci-Fi movies. It all feels boring compared
| to what I get by reading sci-fi instead. I wish I had picked up
| this habit earlier in my life.
|
| For the records, I also read Dostoyevsky this year, his "Crime
| and Punishment".
| dvko wrote:
| Hah - I just started on the Dune series myself too!
|
| Am only a hundred pages in or so, but seeing the progress on
| my e-reader at only 2% makes me quite stoked for what's to
| come. Sadly I saw the movie (for pt. 1) first, but even so
| the books add a lot to what the movie attempts to portray.
| dakull wrote:
| I had a similar reaction - the article gives vibes of
| reductionism and/or as someone pointed out, naivety.
|
| It should be self-evident after a certain point (age) that
| approaching life through the lense of "what could give me an
| advantage over others", whether that's maths or just knowledge
| it won't get you very far or if it does, it will at a severe
| cost on how you're perceived in society furthermore interhuman
| connections will take a toll.
| Bakary wrote:
| This sort of ideology, down to the same details and views about
| history and culture, is extremely common among young software
| engineers and related professions
| tehchromic wrote:
| I binge read Doestoeski at the end of highschool and he remains a
| major influence on me to this day.
|
| The reason is that, encountering life's most challenging
| experiences (which are always human in their origin), these
| novels are like a preset pattern of meditation by which one can
| find the ground.
| osigurdson wrote:
| I think Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is particularly
| relevant to programming (perhaps thought in general).
| mongol wrote:
| I remember Raskolnikov laying in his bed looking at the patterns
| of the wallpaper while feeling moody. That may have been the most
| connected I have felt with a literary character.
| kajaktum wrote:
| mine was No Longer Human when the protagonist sneaks at night
| to write the gift that he actually wanted from his father (when
| he said he wanted books earlier when asked, which was unusual).
| IDK why but I just felt so connected to that character. Perhaps
| I could see myself doing it.
| ozim wrote:
| OK article is touching on the issue that no book will learn you
| how to live.
|
| You have to live your life and make the mistakes on your own.
|
| Reading books helps maybe only with getting "AHA" moment of
| realization - after or just before you do something stupid ;)
| np_tedious wrote:
| The st ligature is interesting. Never seen that before
| frankohn wrote:
| I noticed this too but I found it distracting and not useful.
| At first I thought it was a particle of dirty on my screen and
| realized it was a ligature once I looked more carefully.
|
| I guess a good ligature is one that a reader hardly notice at
| all.
| cvoss wrote:
| Yeah, this ligature struck me as intentionally ironic.
|
| Look at it's design: it's an entirely unnecessary loop that
| goes way up out of the way of the bits that are supposed to
| be connected and makes a sharp turn. Opposite to the actual
| function of a ligature, which is to correct a visual quirk of
| juxtaposing two letters, it goes out of its way to introduce
| a visual quirk.
|
| So, it's not so much a "bad" ligature as it is a caricature
| of one.
| throwaway74829 wrote:
| Having read about 1 to 2/3rds through most of Dostoyevsky's
| books: I really believe they're over-hyped.
|
| Same with Pushkin, Tolstoy, Bulgakov, and so on -- with the only
| exception of Solzhenitsyn.
|
| I think the difference is I'm Slavic, speak a few of the
| languages, and come from the cultures that succeeded those
| authors; so they read mostly as sentimental, overly-emotional,
| and superstitious, i.e. what I feel are the worst parts of the
| mythologized "Russian soul." Their works don't feel new, novel,
| and original: I've seen parts and pieces of it, reflections of
| its essence, expressed all over the average Slavic person.
|
| > Dostoevsky's genius lies in his deep understanding of human
| nature and of spelling out truths about it in ways that inspire
| reflection.
|
| If you resonate with this statement, perhaps you should also
| watch Tarkovsky's _The Mirror._
|
| But for me, the only truth Dostoyevsky has shown me is that
| people are very flawed, are the source of all of their own
| problems, and that Fyodor was a deeply emotional person. But I am
| not, and I find his expression of those emotions to be grating.
|
| I resonate more with the quotes in the Wikipedia article for
| _Idyot_ :
|
| > However the chief criticism, among both reviewers and general
| readers, was in the "fantasticality" of the characters. The
| radical critic D.I. Minaev wrote: "People meet, fall in love,
| slap each other's face--and all at the author's first whim,
| without any artistic truth." V.P. Burenin, a liberal, described
| the novel's presentation of the younger generation as "the purest
| fruit of the writer's subjective fancy" and the novel as a whole
| as "a belletristic compilation, concocted from a multitude of
| absurd personages and events, without any concern for any kind of
| artistic objectivity."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Idiot#Reception
| Bakary wrote:
| What I've noticed is that Russian authors are
| disproportionately mentioned among anglos, and Dostoevsky is
| himself disproportionately mentioned among those authors.
|
| My hypothesis is that it's not just the orientalist appeal of
| the "Russian soul" you mentioned but its combination with
| Christian themes which means it is still familiar and easy to
| understand for Westerners. A bit like the equivalent of a
| rockstar: titillating but not deeply challenging.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| > What I've noticed is that Russian authors are
| disproportionately mentioned among anglos, and Dostoevsky is
| himself disproportionately mentioned among those authors.
|
| On the Internet perhaps, but 19th Russian literature had and
| still has a literary impact in formerly Communist countries,
| India, and Japan. Maybe a certain kind of American is prone
| to over-stating Dostoyevsky's importance, but personally I
| would argue Tolstoy is more disproportionately mentioned.
|
| > My hypothesis is that it's not just the orientalist appeal
| of the "Russian soul" you mentioned but its combination with
| Christian themes which means it is still familiar and easy to
| understand for Westerners. A bit like the equivalent of a
| rockstar: titillating but not deeply challenging.
|
| Oddly enough, what appealed to me was the discussion of
| morality without the overt Christian proselytization. No
| hackneyed metaphor for Jesus or salvation. Just man, his
| actions in the real world, and how he and the audience must
| examine them.
|
| If there is any "orientalist" familiarity to these works that
| I enjoy, it's how self-examination is presented as a
| knight's/ _bogatyr_ 's quest rather than a self-pitying
| confession of weakness and sin.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| It's odd that you regard those 19th/early 20th century authors
| as overly-emotional. In my experience, these works were much
| more blunt in their self-examinations of the human condition
| than the other European and American authors I've read. As for
| questions:
|
| What do you think of Russian-American writers like Ayn Rand and
| Nabokov?
|
| In your view, what philosophical fiction provides a "deeper"
| and less antiquated understanding of today's "Russian soul"?
|
| What American/European/foreign works do you or other Slavs
| consider to be world-shaping?
| killerstorm wrote:
| If you're looking to understand today's "Russian soul" and
| you're good at understanding metaphors, I'd recommend to just
| read the lyrics of "The Russian Field of Experiments" by Egor
| Letov, the most famous Russian punk poet:
|
| https://lyricstranslate.com/en/russkoe-pole-eksperimentov-
| ru... (translation #1 seems to be the most accurate although
| not perfect)
|
| Or you can read the lyrics while listening to the song:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCLuW7jDnM8
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| Thank you for the recommendation.
|
| Perhaps I'm missing something, but my general understanding
| of the song is that every pursuit of ideals in Russia has
| brought about ruin and unless man butchers his own
| aspirations, the cycle of pursuit, destruction, and loss is
| only going to repeat itself.
|
| If so, then that's a very nihilistic assessment on life
| (albeit an eloquent one) but not a wholly original concept.
| I guess I was hoping for something a little more novel or
| profound with a more explicated psychological/epistemic
| position behind it. Something beyond philosophical
| pessimism.
| killerstorm wrote:
| Here's how I understand it.
|
| First, there's a famous Tyutchev poem from 1866 which is
| known by pretty much every Russian
| Russia cannot be understood with the mind alone,
| No ordinary yardstick can span her greatness: She
| stands alone, unique - In Russia, one can only
| believe.
|
| (This is essentially word-by-word translation.)
|
| So Tyutchev claims that Russia is so unique it cannot be
| analyzed. I think "The Russian Field ..." represents an
| analysis of Russia's uniqueness through enumeration of
| paradoxical archetypes which Russian culture holds, which
| makes Russian history/existence itself paradoxical, and
| thus uniquely fucked up.
|
| The song mentions elements of the following
| archetypes/themes:
|
| 1. greater aspirations - God, etc. 2. lust 3. brutality,
| desire for destruction 4. desire for greatness/domination
|
| Of course, they are present in every human culture.
| However, song combines them in a paradoxical way. It's as
| if different layers which are supposed to be distinct are
| brutally mixed. And the resultant mix is not pretty.
|
| How did it happen? The song does not answer directly, but
| we can figure from the history: Russia's societal
| development got delayed, particularly, in XIX century. It
| was still an agrarian country with deeply religious
| population, but at the same time it got aspirations to
| play a global role.
|
| So e.g. suppose you're a peasant. In Church you've heard
| there's God, God set Tsar to rule Russia, you're supposed
| to love your Tsar or you're a bad man. Then you're
| recruited into an army and go to war and shoot at other
| people. Why? I guess nobody would explain, but presumably
| God wants and because you love Tsar you have to do it.
|
| The song might reference this retarded societal
| development in line "On the patriarchal landfill of
| obsolete concepts", "patriarchal" referencing Orthodox
| Christianity and Tsar-father as a head of everything.
|
| Thus we have a mixture of 'greater aspirations' layer
| with 'brutality of war', e.g. in song this paradoxical
| mixture is referenced e.g. in "Laws of etiquette for
| mortars" line. There the word for "etiquette" is actually
| more vague term which can be found in Bible teachings, so
| it hints of mixture of ethical teachings with howitzers.
|
| But then Russia went from insanity of Orthodox monarchism
| straight into the insanity of communism, famous for its
| double-think, etc. So Russia's collective unconscious
| never had a chance to clean up and unmix different
| layers, but got even more confused.
|
| As a result, greater aspirations did not become a
| guidance, but merely a veneer hiding the brutality.
|
| You can see this happening now - Putin talks about God,
| unity, saving brothers, etc. But people are brutally
| killed and raped. And for Russians it makes sense, it is
| a part of an archetype - God. Greater good. Howitzers go
| BOOM. They are used to this.
|
| I asked my friend "So you want to save Russian-speaking
| people in Mariupol from "nazis". Why are you bombing the
| city?!" He replied: "Of course, it makes sense - that's
| how liberate a city from nazis, you gotta bomb it, that's
| how they did it in WWII". For him, it makes sense, he saw
| that in movies.
|
| So anyway, I don't think it's nihilism. Letov describes
| some dark fucked-up archetypes under a veneer of Russian
| culture, but he doesn't make predictions about the future
| here (aside from a possibility of these archetypes
| materializing - which we see, unfortunately).
| killerstorm wrote:
| Yeah. If Russian classics contained some great life lessons,
| how do you explain Russia? Every kid reads these classics in
| school, and it's a shit of a country.
| Bakary wrote:
| The truth is that you usually can't really act as much as
| you'd like on those life lessons.
| pas wrote:
| do they really read it, or it's "in the curricula" but no one
| really gives a shit, there are a few standard questions-and-
| answers about them and that's it, no?
| killerstorm wrote:
| Well, they have to write essays based on these books to get
| passing grades. And I would guess wise teachers (who read
| all these books!) make sure that these essays cover main
| life lessons, right?
|
| FWIW I grew up in Russian culture (Donetsk). Personally, I
| find XX and XXI century books WAY better, more relevant,
| interesting, useful, etc.
| ABraidotti wrote:
| > what I feel are the worst parts of the mythologized "Russian
| soul."
|
| I think I understand. I like reading postcolonial literary
| criticism because it asks us to consider any kind of national
| literary identification with skepticism. So I gotta ask: when
| you were growing up, what American literature did you encounter
| and what did you think of it?
|
| FWIW I think I like Gogol's and Maxim Gorky's short stories
| most of all the Russian lit I've read.
| novok wrote:
| > Their works don't feel new, novel, and original: I've seen
| parts and pieces of it, reflections of its essence, expressed
| all over the average Slavic person.
|
| The problem with the classics is they become so inspiring to
| future artists and readers that the themes, parts and other
| things disseminate into the culture to become stereotypical and
| boring. It's a big chicken and egg problem often enough. What
| was slavic art like before these people I wonder. Something
| impossible to separate.
| fedeb95 wrote:
| There is also another great thing that can dispense knowledge,
| the same that inspired both classics and mathematics: real life.
| You mention Taleb, so you must be a bit familiar with Mandelbrot
| work. Well he observed reality carefully, free of prejudices,
| skeptically, and took it for what it is. Then built math on top
| of it. Sometimes going outside of recombining ideas and taking
| new ones from reality itself can be good. That said, I come from
| the opposite experience, having read my share of classics and
| recently discovering math (I was also taught it but always
| approached as yet another thing to study, not as a tool to model
| reality).
| imran0 wrote:
| Dostoevsky's mastery on human psychology aside, Crime and
| Punishment is one of the best thrillers I have ever read.
| user3939382 wrote:
| I've had a hard time trying to read both Dostoevsky and Tolstoy
| because of the names. I guess because I don't speak Russian, the
| names are long and complicated and in most cases, compounding the
| problem, there are too many characters. It makes it very
| difficult to read "in my head" and keep track of what's going on.
| emj wrote:
| At least in Crime and punishment the names have a meaning. So
| you can look them up and see if it fits the characters. I just
| go by how the characters act, until have differentiated
| themselves enough I do not learn the names, a bit like real
| life.
| np_tedious wrote:
| Wonder if "translating" names could help?
| ashika wrote:
| the best translations will usually have a brief explanation
| of the function various forms of patronymic & affectionate
| name forms which carry meaning in russian. translating every
| instance of an affectionate name to "hun" or "buster" or
| whatever modern english uses would be a bit too much, i
| think. some of the more formal honorific aliases may have no
| real english equivalent but once explained its not hard to
| follow along with the author's intent. "oh this weasel is
| laying it on thick..." etc.
| jmartrican wrote:
| I had similar problem. The audio version helped. I never
| remembered any of their names, but their voices stood out.
| zazaulola wrote:
| I read Crime and Punishment when I was in school. I was sixteen
| years old. It's hard to appreciate classic works at that age. But
| we were forced to read these books on a compulsory basis. I
| didn't find anything revolutionary in this book.
|
| Ten years later I experienced a similar enthusiasm as the author
| of the post while reading the works of Abraham Maslow. I
| recommend everyone to read at least the last book written by
| Maslow. The book is non-fiction, but written in first person.
|
| https://archive.org/details/fartherreachesof00masl/mode/2up
| BeetleB wrote:
| > I read Crime and Punishment when I was in school. I was
| sixteen years old. It's hard to appreciate classic works at
| that age. But we were forced to read these books on a
| compulsory basis. I didn't find anything revolutionary in this
| book.
|
| I read it at 18. Borrowed it from a friend and found it so
| boring I could read only a few pages at a time. Then I stopped
| reading. Some months later, I realized I needed to return his
| book. So I forced myself to read the rest of the book (over
| half) all in one night. I didn't care if my brain tuned out as
| I read the pages. I just wanted to be done with it.
|
| I was glad to be rid of something so boring.
|
| Not long after, I had a dream. I was hanging out with friends
| outside at about 1am. Then one of my friends says "Hey, I just
| heard on the radio they found another body - someone was
| murdered tonight!"
|
| I froze. I was that murderer. I'd killed a bunch of people
| lately. How should I respond to this? Should I ignore it? Make
| a joke about it? Talk about it seriously? How do I say it so
| none of them suspect me?
|
| We eventually walk back to where we had parked our motorbikes.
| Mine was not there. Had the police found it while searching for
| me? I woke up.
|
| Years later, I talked to a few people who had read the book.
| Some hated it. Some loved it. But they all said they really
| felt like Raskalnikov - either while reading it or in some
| dream they later had. I give credit to the book being so
| powerful.
|
| Years after that I read The Brothers Karamazov. A much bigger
| book, and even more boring. Had no effect on me. I've forgotten
| all of it.
| frankohn wrote:
| Pretty agree with the post but it is funny he discovered that
| "truth" so late in his life.
|
| I generally consider mathematics and physics as being the higher
| achievements of human knowledge and it is normal to "worship"
| them as the most important field of study so much that some
| people dedicate their entire life to them with the same devotion
| of true monks.
|
| It is surprising that the author didn't include Physics in the
| fields that provides valuable and durable knowledge worth to
| acquire. Mathematics alone is sort of "sterile" when is not used
| within physics knowledge. Without physics it is a sort of highly
| abstract beauty that people pursuit only for the sake of it's
| beauty.
|
| On the other side we have to recognize that both mathematics and
| physics capture nothing about the experience of life as a human
| being. For this we need real life experience, knowing other
| people and exchange with them, study history and read historical
| and social essays in addition to literature classics.
|
| One will not find in them the sharp accuracy and simple laws that
| physics and mathematics provides but I guess there is no other
| way to learn what life is and its partial, imperfect truths.
|
| I also cannot resist to recommend, for those who love reading
| Dostoevsky, to read also Bulgakov's master and Marguerite which
| is a true masterpiece of beauty and gives a sharp and deep view
| of what humanity is.
| mbeex wrote:
| > Mathematics alone is sort of "sterile" when is not used
| within physics knowledge.
|
| Oh no, mathematics is many things. For me - a mathematician -
| it started with Galois' proof about the nonsolvability of
| polynomial equations with degree >= 5. No physics is required
| for this way of thinking about symmetries. Same with number
| theory, primes and indefinitely more things. Many gained
| applications to physical problems later, many not. The latter
| is not a sign that something is missing.
| acchow wrote:
| > Mathematics alone is sort of "sterile" when is not used
| within physics knowledge.
|
| Surely you can't believe this anymore with the discovery of
| computer science, AI, type theory , etc?
| frankohn wrote:
| > Surely you can't believe this anymore with the discovery of
| computer science, AI, type theory , etc?
|
| Well, I guess in some way we observe that now mathematics can
| be coupled, in addition to physics, to some new fields like
| AI, computer science and cryptography.
|
| In any case I still think that mathematics becomes more
| interesting and worthy to study when it is applied into
| another field like the one we mentioned. In some sense its
| applications give more sense and more depth to mathematics
| itself.
|
| Some people don't want to learn mathematics because they
| don't see how it is useful and they don't see its beauty
| neither. Yet sometime it happens that, later, they discover
| some applications where mathematics is needed and at this
| moment the understand how useful and deep mathematics is,
| just because they see its applications and they understand
| its meaning.
| weberer wrote:
| Or even accounting.
| unhammer wrote:
| > Bulgakov's master and Marguerite which is a true masterpiece
| of beauty and gives a sharp and deep view of what humanity is
|
| It's also a very fun book! (Apparantly not all the translations
| are that good though, but O'Connor and Burgin's
| https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/mikhail-bulgakov/the-ma...
| is.)
| userlog4051 wrote:
| I can also recommend the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation of
| M&M, as well as their translation of The Brothers Karamazov.
| starkd wrote:
| P&V translations are beautifully done. The older Constance
| Garnett translations are good, though a bit archaic
| sounding now. I read a very bad translation of Master &
| Margherita, but it was still worthwhile. Go for the P&V is
| you can.
| HellDunkel wrote:
| The person has read 1 and a half Dostojewskis. Fair enough, it
| takes a while and is quite a churn. Then wrote a blogpost about
| it. As the person likes to extract use out of everything he/she
| does, what use did he get? He found some deeper truth. Ok
| perfect, but where is the news? This is the reason we read novels
| and classics in the first place. We are not trying to extract how
| to get back into shape or which stocks to bet on by reading
| novels.
| dotsam wrote:
| > Some deep truths about human nature require instead the
| reflection provoked by the classics.
|
| Yes, read Dostoevsky and the classics. There is so much to learn
| and to enjoy.
|
| But remember that great authors didn't discover deep truths of
| human nature from books alone, but from their attention to the
| experiences of real life.
|
| "When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his
| mental process. In learning to write, the pupil goes over with
| his pen what the teacher has outlined in pencil: so in reading;
| the greater part of the work of thought is already done for us.
| This is why it relieves us to take up a book after being occupied
| with our own thoughts. And in reading, the mind is, in fact, only
| the playground of another's thoughts. So it comes about that if
| anyone spends almost the whole day in reading, and by way of
| relaxation devotes the intervals to some thoughtless pastime, he
| gradually loses the capacity for thinking; just as the man who
| always rides, at last forgets how to walk. This is the case with
| many learned persons: they have read themselves stupid." - Arthur
| Schopenhauer
| Silverback_VII wrote:
| What if the deep truths about the human nature are in fact very
| shallow?
|
| I can imagine that all human deepness is, not unlike the very
| sofisticated feathers of the peacock, just a tool to increase
| status & SMV.
| cowuser666 wrote:
| And language is just a tool to hunt better and coordinate
| distribution of berries. And human consciousness is just a
| tool to model other minds to negotiate better. Nothing to see
| here.
| Kevcmk wrote:
| Cynicism is both cheap and lazy. You two sound miserable
| cowuser666 wrote:
| Worldviews don't win points for being expensive and
| industrious. But my point, had you seen past your mood
| affiliation, was that explaining the origin of a
| phenomenon doesn't tell you its value.
| molly0 wrote:
| Good point.
| theonemind wrote:
| How would you explain homosexuality with this model?
| Historically, it has actually cost in terms of status,
| certainly doesn't confer reproductive fitness on the
| individual, and sorely restricts the individual's sexual
| market.
|
| It falls apart rather quickly without the tell-tale signs of
| a tortured model, like modelling our solar system as the
| motion of circles because you won't admit the ellipse. You
| can do it, but you probably just need a better model.
|
| For starters, the over-focus on the individual misses
| competition at level above and below, genes and groups.
| Secondly, it glosses over emergent phenomena too glibly. If
| you try to model a presidential election in terms of quantum
| physics and general relativity, you won't get very far. I can
| even point out an emergent phenomenon that radically changes
| this calculus, the human frontal lobes. Unlike most animals,
| we can suppress our immediate reactions and get mental time
| and distance from the world, to remap our motivations and act
| in ways completely absurd from the point of status and sexual
| market value, like suicide bombings. Status and sexual market
| value drop to dead zero. You can try to tie it back to status
| and sexual market value, passing through the activity of the
| frontal lobes, which would only prove my point about emergent
| phenomena and a tortured model.
|
| "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear,
| simple, and wrong." - H. L. Mencken
| polio wrote:
| There are plenty of people who still lead complex lives after
| they are effectively out of said market.
| Silverback_VII wrote:
| Some people certainly think that they are out of the market
| but their organism may have a different opinion.
|
| People who are truly out of the market like postmenopausal
| women often feel a lack of motivation and their physical
| activity measurably decreases.
| svat wrote:
| Similar thought from Albert Einstein (1930):
|
| > "Much reading after a certain age diverts the mind from its
| creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own
| brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking, just as
| the man who spends too much time in the theaters is apt to be
| content with living vicariously instead of living his own
| life."
| tehchromic wrote:
| I love this. I always wonder why I have almost no interest in
| novels now although I spent my entire youth buried in them.
| Occasionally I feel guilty. But I think life became the
| novel?
| enviclash wrote:
| "life became the novel"... Sounds beautiful but idealistic.
| Surely risk perception plays a role in the difference.
| Silverback_VII wrote:
| Whenever I read something about Einstein the following comes
| to my mind:
|
| "The people told me, however, that the big ear was not only a
| man, but a great man, a genius. But I never believed in the
| people when they spake of great men - and I hold to my belief
| that it was a reversed cripple, who had too little of
| everything, and too much of one thing."
| fluoridation wrote:
| "What a fool I am", said the fox. "Here I am wearing myself
| out to get a bunch of sour grapes that are not worth gaping
| for."
| dotsam wrote:
| Very strong echo of Schopenhauer here. Einstein was a big
| fan, and even had Schopenhauer's portrait on his office wall.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_and_philosophical_.
| ..
| montefischer wrote:
| My favorite passage from that essay:
|
| > From all this it may be concluded that thoughts put down on
| paper are nothing more than footprints in the sand: one sees
| the road the man has taken, but in order to know what he saw on
| the way, one requires his eyes.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| I feel like there's a lot to be gleaned here, but all I can
| focus on is how this - especially the last line - could be
| easily misrepresented to spread an anti-education message.
| mmmpop wrote:
| > an anti-education message
|
| But since when is all reading "education"? I see a lot of
| people reading a lot of trash and could be spending their
| time reading Dostoevsky, or better yet plotting their own
| murder + burglaries !
| cowuser666 wrote:
| This treats arguments like opaque tokens where we know in
| advance which are good and bad, and need to make sure we have
| lots of good and few bad. But actually arguments have content
| and to know whether they are good or bad, we have to engage
| with them.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| I'm going to be perfectly honest, I have no idea what you
| mean in this context/what you're saying to me once I get
| past the first comma.
| cowuser666 wrote:
| I'm saying you're not engaging with the substance of his
| point.
|
| If I were to say, "America had a negative impact in
| geopolitics when it invaded Iraq," it's like you
| responded with "I'm sorry, but that just seems anti-
| American."
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| I don't think that's a particularly fair or accurate
| assessment of what I said.
| 9dev wrote:
| Just wanted to say that this was an excellent example to
| illustrate your case.
| jorvi wrote:
| To me it reads like anti-consumerism.
|
| If you only consume and don't create, your mind gradually
| loses its capacity for creativity [and you will eventually
| have to reacquire it, the same way a comatose patient needs
| to relearn walking].
| [deleted]
| psychomugs wrote:
| You could say similar of any technology, as they all extend
| and amputate ourselves in some way. I read the Schopenhauer
| line as a sentiment against technosolutionism; technology
| like books are fine in moderation, but they are not
| replacements for the reality of lived experience.
|
| See Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman for better arguments.
| oldsklgdfth wrote:
| Came here to mention those two.
|
| It's a subtle message. Technology giveth and technology
| taketh. Use of any technology is a trade off.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| I definitely see that interpretation and it's how I would
| take it personally, I'm just kind of musing.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| its_bbq wrote:
| A quote that's impossible to read without some irony
| starkd wrote:
| Neil Postman came to much the same conclusion about modern
| entertainment.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Amusing-Ourselves-Death-Discourse-Bus...
| diffxx wrote:
| That's not what I took away from the book. He mentions his
| own personal enjoyment of trashy television multiple times.
| His concern was that he believed that democracy is
| fundamentally incompatible with a media landscape dominated
| by television (s/televison/social media in 2022).
| montefischer wrote:
| In fact, Postman went to great lengths to detail the ways
| in which "print culture" (including books, newspapers, and
| even public oration) with its great commitment to complex
| argumentation shaped society in ways consonant with the
| sustaining of a democratic republic, while warning that the
| modern replacement of this older culture was perhaps not so
| well suited to maintaining a self-governing people.
|
| (edit) Social media / the internet more generally enables
| 2-way communication in a way that was not possible in
| either print nor TV culture. Conceptually it lowers
| barriers to entry to near-zero for communicating one's
| ideas & learning from others. Earlier forms depended much
| more heavily on gatekeepers. Is a more nominally democratic
| form of media culture than this even possible?
| ardkor wrote:
| Maursault wrote:
| The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment effectively read
| themselves. They can't be put down. Only with exceptional
| discipline and great difficulty could one "take it slow," and
| stop for note-taking. I don't know who reads novels like that.
| Reading them, time stops, and you return to your life about a
| week later. Notes From Underground isn't easy, but it is short.
| The Idiot and The Possessed (Demons, The Devils), if even 100
| pages can be completed, are impossible to finish. I am unaware of
| anyone who has read Dostoyevski's first three novels, The Village
| of Stepanchikovo, Humilated and Insulted, or The House of the
| Dead, so the assumption is they are either illegible or
| inscrutable, the result being they can't be read.
| HellDunkel wrote:
| Interesting. I tried "The Idiot" once but was put off by
| Dostojewski until now. Nobody tells you these things.
| Maursault wrote:
| I recommend starting with Crime and Punishment, then reward
| yourself for completing with Brothers Karamazov. Then see
| Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors, which is a clever retelling
| of both at the same time for those that read the material.
| HellDunkel wrote:
| Will follow your advice.
| [deleted]
| amelius wrote:
| > [Taleb] showed, through his life's work, that one can make
| money by betting against people that believe too much in
| mathematics and their applicability to the real world.
|
| Does anyone know any good examples of this?
| hedgehog0 wrote:
| I do not know if this is relevant, but I think Newton and Kayes
| (or some other econonmist) used math in the stock market and
| lost heavily.
| brnaftr361 wrote:
| Taleb is associated with Universa,
|
| "Universa's flagship "Black Swan Protection Protocol" fund
| earned its near two dozen institutional investors a staggering
| 3,612% in March, putting its 2020 gains at 4,144%."
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-08/taleb-adv...
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoinegara/2020/04/13/how-a-go...
| NateEag wrote:
| I believe the author is referring to the money Taleb made
| during the 2008 financial crash, rather literally betting
| against people using mathematics to model complex systems
| (which collapsed and failed rather badly, much as Taleb
| predicts).
|
| Wikipedia has some links to sources in the summary section:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb
| pas wrote:
| There's this big trope about how "models don't work", because
| black swans, etc. (Let's not get into the fact that this
| claim is itself a model, and his own investment strategy is,
| of course, based on his model.)
|
| But the question is, is this really true? Why isn't Taleb the
| richest person? (I remember reading somewhere that his
| strategy of betting against the mainstream underperformed,
| but he might have made a biiig windfall due to COVID & the
| war? But are those enough to offset the previous
| underperformances?)
| NateEag wrote:
| I haven't read the books, but I believe his argument is not
| "models don't work," but rather "all models are flawed, and
| you can't reliably predict the critical flaws. So, don't
| treat them with blind trust - adapt your strategies to the
| fact that some of your models will fail without warning and
| in ways you can't predict."
| SnowHill9902 wrote:
| Excellent. It's more general than mathematics, their problem is
| with a Platonic worldview of idealized models. Those people
| mistake the models for the real world and that's their demise.
| ashika wrote:
| this guy is going to love moby dick
| scop wrote:
| Moby Duck literally broke my brain and soul when I read it for
| the first time last year. I still think about that book about
| once a week, with some sense of foreboding excitement/dread.
| mikrl wrote:
| The classics are important because they are typically 'classic'
| due to their applicability over space and time. The authors
| managed to distil ever-recurring human drama and pathos (and the
| happy stuff too) into something timeless, though of course in the
| context of where and when they lived.
|
| Every generation when it comes up will think they're the first
| and best ones to experience anything, it's just normal and always
| has been. Once the real world sets in or you hit your mid 20s
| angst (whichever comes first) the classics are a comfort and will
| connect you to a raw world of the past. You aren't alone, nor
| especially abnormal nor special. Dostoevsky knew what you'd go
| through. Tolstoy already got your bullcrap. Hell, even Ovid can
| show you things and the Roman Empire is long dead.
|
| Not everyone has to enjoy the same things and some haute things
| are definitely overrated. However, if you want to know yourself,
| your world and the other people in it in a way that transcends
| the capricious day-to-day, and has a bit more fuzziness,
| dimensionality (and spirit) than clinical psychology, the
| classics are waiting for you. They've seen it all before.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| I find a lot of classics to be foreign in their understanding
| of the human condition and generally just archaic, or deeply
| specific to their time and place.
| bckr wrote:
| Can you give an example? I would love to read a blog post
| about this perspective
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Well I don't write blogs. Or read much. Or write literary
| reviews. But let's pick two.
|
| The odyssey is a very old classic. The framework of the
| adventure is still great. But Odysseus is a supremacist
| dick. He's pretty similar to MCU Iron Man in terms of
| narrative and depth. We get the sense that it's ok to kill
| the people in his home at the end because he is mighty
| Odysseus but I think that's pretty lame. I could go on but
| it's been too long to cite examples from memory.
|
| A tale of two cities was another one I enjoyed a lot as a
| teen. The sloppy romanticism of the dude who devotes his
| life to a love he will never have seemed really quaint, but
| now seems just pathetic. I'm actually really annoyed when I
| see behavior like this in fiction now. It's very frequent
| in token gay characters because a lot of writers seem to
| assume that gay people fall in love with straight people
| and can never get over it.
|
| Stuff that's resonated with me at a more thematic level
| recently... let's say Parasite (Korean film), Mob Psycho
| 100 (anime, season 1), Over the Garden Wall, Bojack
| Horseman, and the midnight gospel. Not very universal, but
| they felt more relevant and more profound. The last one
| cheating a bit as it's literally philosophical interviews.
|
| Good literature is entertaining and conveys some greater
| meaning. Classics tend to do a pretty good job on this, but
| entertainment and thematic relevance she over time quite a
| bit.
|
| The original SpongeBob SquarePants movie was a copy of the
| odyssey's plot for entertainment but focused on a coming of
| age theme of what it means to be an adult and whether it
| was something to strive for. Dare I ask which of the
| SpongeBob SquarePants Movie and the Odyssey is a better
| piece of literature for a 21st century kid?
|
| I think it's a harder question than many would give credit.
| But I think regardless we should be more eager to discuss
| thematic comprehension of art with children for the stuff
| they watch. Because I spent a few years in school writing
| essays about how every book contained the theme of "Caring"
| and man that was fucking dumb.
| pas wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33046327 ?
| SnowHill9902 wrote:
| Dostoevsky has been a better psychologist to me than actual
| licensed psychologists.
| kuramitropolis wrote:
| Do not, I repeat, DO NOT read Dostoevsky. It's full of harmful
| memes which are very likely to impair your subsequent
| functioning, and spread out into your surroundings, by way of
| contaminating your intentional actions with paradox (not the fun
| kind, either.)
|
| I would generally suggest avoiding Russian literature entirely,
| especially if you're a programmer. Unless you've somehow made
| yourself basilisk-proof (and note that the reverse Algernon
| method won't work, their whole deal's bootstrapped)
|
| EDIT:
|
| OP says:
|
| > Try applying the scientific method to define the psychology of
| the criminal. You will end up writing and sending a
| questionnaire, then publishing a paper in Science of how 80% of
| respondents (n=12) selected option A in the questionnaire. Try
| even finding 12 criminals willing to reply honestly to your
| questionnaire. Then ask yourself why social science papers don't
| replicate.
|
| Now imagine a society with institutions that have the knowledge
| of how to _force_ their way through the above issue, and decide
| for yourself whether you really wish to integrate any
| intellectual outputs from that society in your decision making
| process.
| Bakary wrote:
| Could you give some examples of these harmful memes you have
| found in Dostoevsky's works? Although I suppose by definition
| you might not be willing to do that...
| kuramitropolis wrote:
| >Although I suppose by definition you might not be willing to
| do that...
|
| That's not part of the definition. Would have much fewer of
| the things kicking around if they precluded their own
| distribution, no?
|
| Thankfully the ones that do are a subset, otherwise basilisk
| spotting would be a much more introspective activity.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| I could totally imagine how out of 100000 programmers having
| read Crime and Punishment, a few would take an axe to their
| local pawn shop.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Reading literature might cure scientism.
| jmartrican wrote:
| So he only read 1.5 books of Dostoevsky, and now he telling
| everyone to read his books. I get it, I also had a religious
| experience when I read Crime and Punishment, but one cannot
| assume all his books will be that great without actually reading
| more of them. Call me back when you get through a few more. Or
| maybe change the title to "Why read Crime And Punishment".
| starkd wrote:
| There are many writers who have only one great book, and the
| others are all flops. Dosteovsky had a few that were utter
| flops in the literary sense. (The Idiot did not sell well,
| although it has its merits). You could even say he only hit his
| stride when he wrote Brothers.
|
| John Kennedy Toole's "Confederacy of Dunces" was not only
| brilliantly comedic, but also quit profound. His other works
| were nothing special.
| kieckerjan wrote:
| I met a young and apparently highly intelligent AI researcher the
| other week who confessed to me that he thought fiction (books but
| also movies etc) was a waste of his time: there was nothing to be
| gained there.
|
| Being a lover of fiction myself, I huffed and puffed and he
| challenged me to name him a book that would change his mind.
| Usually when people ask me where to start in literature, I advise
| them to start at the top (Chekhov, say) because life is short and
| you might be dead tomorrow and then you missed out on the best.
| With an antagonistic reader like this , I am not sure that is the
| best choice though.
|
| Any tips would be welcome!
| pas wrote:
| There are quite a few recommendations for the classics, but if
| someone doesn't enjoy the slow burn of those deep books, maybe
| they should start with something lot more dopaminergic: animes
| and movies!
|
| PsychoPass, Akira, Cowboy Bebop, Neon Genesis Evangelion,
| Attack on Titan.
|
| So, movies. I only saw _The Shawshank Redemption_ a few years
| ago, and it 's really really good. Classic. Human. Touching.
| I'm not even sure how to characterize it except yes, really go
| see it, it's really at the top of the power distribution of
| movies.
|
| _12 Angry Men_. At this point it 's the cliche of old but good
| movies. At this point it's a satire of a socially interesting
| movie due to its naivete, yet for someone who seems a bit close
| minded it might be just the right thing. (Or not? :D)
|
| _The Pianist_. Again, simple. Brutal. Or the recent _Joker_.
|
| . . .
|
| But really when it comes to AI and fiction.
|
| _Blade Runner_. If that 's not fiction that's worth investing
| time into, then what is? Even typing this I've got the chills
| thinking about Roy Batty.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| The Blade Runner that in theaters was terrible.
|
| There were tons of crappy voice overs explaining what was
| going on. Theological content was removed - the "confession"
| scene where the robot murdered his creator, the stigmata-
| style wounds, the dove flying up to heaven. Even the famous
| "I've seen things ..." speech was gone.
|
| When home movies became a thing it was re-edited. It became a
| classic in the "cuts."
|
| I don't know if there's a lesson there. Maybe "don't worry
| about re-editing stinkers."
| filoleg wrote:
| > PsychoPass, Akira, Cowboy Bebop, Neon Genesis Evangelion,
| Attack on Titan.
|
| I totally agree with everything on this list, except Akira
| and NGE. And I am saying that as someone for whom NGE is the
| all-time personal favorite piece of animated media (and I
| like Akira a lot too, just not as much).
|
| Akira and NGE are pretty much deconstructions of genres, and
| are really heavy on at least some basic level of previous
| exposure and understanding of the context. I am fairly
| certain that if you make someone without much previous
| exposure to the context watch Akira, you will get a very
| resounding "what the fuck did you just make me watch".
| Watched it in a movie theater myself around 5 years ago, and
| it was definitely a wild ride. With NGE, I rewatched it many
| times, partially because I almost always discovered something
| new on subsequent rewatches.
|
| The rest of the ones you've mentioned are great for easing-in
| though, and are not shallow even in the slightest. I would
| also add Ghost in the Shell: Stand-alone Complex series to
| the list of recommendations.
| bazoom42 wrote:
| Perhaps the Harry Potter books? Don't throw Tolstoy at someone
| who havent read fiction before.
| noSyncCloud wrote:
| Would you really recommend YA to an adult?
| e12e wrote:
| > Would you really recommend YA to an adult?
|
| I certainly would, but probably not Harry Potter (personal
| preference - I think "magic" has been done better, and I
| think "boarding school" has been done better).
|
| So maybe "Earthsea" by Ursula LeGuin, for example.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| I think the basic impulse is correct, actually. There's a
| _very_ good chance that a person with this kind of attitude
| is a poor reader--of literature, at least, if not in
| general. If you drop them right into the heavy stuff, they
| 'll probably bounce off really fast.
|
| It's a skill you have to develop, like when you encounter a
| new musical genre. Lots of people get stuck at the "this
| sucks and is probably bad and overrated anyway" stage and
| don't open their minds and challenge themselves to
| understand _why_ people like it, when encountering
| literature early on, similar to how many people get stuck
| in that same place for any musical genres they didn 't
| learn to appreciate by age 25.
|
| At best, they end up reading very light fiction for the
| rest of their lives--perhaps even YA, which is widely read
| among adults, in fact. At worst they decide the whole
| thing's a pretentious sham and they're smarter for not
| having engaged, which seems to be closer to the case here.
|
| Not sure I'd go with YA if you're trying to convince
| someone of value in literature beyond entertainment,
| though. But lighter high-school tier literature, maybe.
| Salinger (but probably not Catcher in the Rye) or Vonnegut
| are decent choices, being at about the lightest end that'll
| still (if the reader's open to it) work those muscles.
| Gotta start small to develop the skills & taste to
| appreciate the sublime when it's expressed in written
| words, and to find meaning, enjoyment, and new mental tools
| that novice readers largely miss--which is why they often
| think well-regarded literature is boring and stuffy.
| pas wrote:
| lot of people watch _a lot_ of YA anime as adults.
|
| reading HP is fast and loose fun. the characters are okay,
| the world is okay-ish, the story is the standard good vs
| evil, there are some interesting dilemmas and the whole
| setting makes it a lot more palatable than the classic
| classics :)
|
| (of course there are huuuuuuge plotholes and anyone with a
| more than two bits of imagination/curiosity starts to pick
| at the surface of the world it falls apart, like almost
| anything with magic in it)
| bazoom42 wrote:
| To an adult who have never read fiction? Yes. You have to
| start somewhere.
|
| People are just suggesting their own favorite books, but
| nobody _started_ reading fiction with Anna Karenina. But
| many started with HP and went on to more challenging stuff.
| pier25 wrote:
| I'm 43 years old and I enjoy reading Harry Potter, at least
| some of the books.
|
| But I will concede I've tried other YA series and just
| couldn't get on with it.
| drlolz wrote:
| A person with that attitude doesn't need a perfect list of
| books, they need to live more of their life. Fiction will
| likely find them when they're ready for it. Seems futile to try
| to convince them otherwise, if they're presently writing off
| fiction and film.
| Antoniocl wrote:
| It's likely highly dependent on the individual. There's a lot
| of literature is beautiful, immersive, and speaks to deep
| universal truths that are harder to capture in other mediums.
| To steelman his argument, even given that all of this is true,
| it's a harder sell that engaging with the works is useful to
| him, on an individual level.
|
| For me, Infinite Jest helped me be more empathetic, which was
| an area I lacked a lot at the time, to the point that reading
| it was just clearly useful to me.
|
| But other than that? It's hard to say. I derive a lot of
| pleasure from fiction, and find the experiences I get from them
| to be highly meaningful and to sometimes stay with me for
| years, not unlike memories of times with good friends. Whether
| or not that's of value to you as an individual just depends on
| your values.
| cvoss wrote:
| Is this person highly cynical about human relationships and
| emotions and desires?
|
| If so, that makes your job a whole lot harder, but you may be
| able to challenge that by linking a moving work of fiction with
| an actual closely held relationship or desire in this person's
| life. But do not expect to be able to just hand him a book and
| watch it happen. Speaking from personal experience, I
| frequently require someone to discuss fiction with before it
| will "hit home", and I'm not even antagonistic to fiction at
| all. I'm just bad at it unless I can talk it through with
| somebody who can be my guide.
| alexashka wrote:
| Right, a waste of _his_ time, today. Not yours or anyone else
| 's.
|
| Doesn't literature teach that it's different strokes for
| different folks? :)
|
| There is no need for anyone to convert others to their hobby of
| choice - his challenge was a response to you huffing and
| puffing, not a genuine request.
| starkd wrote:
| That's a common complaint about literature. I remmeber one
| person who wouldn't read fiction because they said "it was just
| all lies". Literature isn't just a recitation of facts, it
| reflects the organizing principle of our values. It sparks
| creativity.
|
| If the classics feel to archaic or they are too inaccessible,
| you also might try some contemporary authors. Michael Crichton
| is very accessible. I think his works can be equally inspiring
| and creative.
| e12e wrote:
| > I remmeber one person who wouldn't read fiction because
| they said "it was just all lies".
|
| "Artists use lies to tell the truth. Yes, I created a lie.
| But because you believed it, you found something true about
| yourself."
|
| - Alan Moore, V for Vendetta
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Was that one person Plato?
| richardjdare wrote:
| I sometimes recommend Borges (Labyrinths) and Kafka (The Trial,
| Short Stories) to tech people looking to get into literature.
| berlinquin wrote:
| And within labyrinths, the Library of Babel is a good place
| to start. Circular Ruins and the Pierre Menard/Don Quixote
| one are favorites.
| dlee766 wrote:
| The Little Prince maybe
| jcalabro wrote:
| Sounds like it might be a losing battle, but the first thing
| that came to mind was Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. Short,
| approachable, funny, and confronts topics that probably are
| interesting to an AI researcher.
| bckr wrote:
| This is from someone who is woefully under-read, and only
| remembered my teenage love of sci-fi in the last couple of
| years. I thought similarly for several years, that fiction was
| a waste of time. But then I realized I was scrolling through
| Twitter every day, and that felt like eating french fries as a
| meal: lacking substance.
|
| Reading long form prose increases your attention span and the
| shape of your thoughts.
|
| Reading fiction stimulates the imagination, which opens up the
| space of ideas that the mind can generate.
|
| Fiction is a compressed simulation of life. By reading good
| fiction one lives more life.
|
| Fiction is a cultural touchstone. New relationships open up
| when there are shared understandings of stories.
|
| Good, hard science fiction is a record of what some of the most
| imaginative scientific thinkers (not necessarily scientists)
| have pondered. Again, mind expanding.
|
| Science fiction stimulates curiosity by asking "what if"?
|
| We all have to engage in lower energy activities and "waste
| time". Watching documentaries is a "waste of time" for someone
| not engaged in professional research on the relevant subject.
| Do you use Reddit? That's a waste of time. Having a science
| fiction book next to the toilet will leave you feeling more
| nourished after you've done your business (I look forward to
| using the bathroom when I know there's a delicious book waiting
| for me that I only read there).
|
| Dead tree books are better for someone who has a hard time
| reading. Studies show there's a big difference in retention
| between words on a screen and words in print. Dead tree books
| also benefit from being "things" that can be left in the
| intended reading location, and give a sense of progress and of
| conquering when completed.
|
| The tactile nature of flipping pages and of breaking in a
| paperback is lovely. The cover art attracts the eyes to the
| book.
|
| Reading a book is a different action than looking at your phone
| or computer, and it has a different set of feelings, emotions,
| thought patterns. There's the smell of a printed book.
|
| I love Asimov. I, Robot is easy because it's a collection of
| very short stories, but it risks being seen as shallow. The End
| of Eternity is considered Asimov's best novel, and it's not too
| long. I hear good things about The Last Question. Foundation is
| lovely.
|
| Be right back, going to buy more Asimov.
| filoleg wrote:
| > I love Asimov. I, Robot is easy because it's a collection
| of very short stories, but it risks being seen as shallow.
|
| Haha, funny you mention it, because now that I think about
| it, it hits that attention-span-needed spot right in-between
| blog/reddit posts and novels. Which, is a pretty nice and
| gentle way to ease someone into reading novel-sized material.
|
| It greatly helps that reading Asimov's short stories today
| still feels very gripping and relevant, probably even moreso
| than back when it was originally published. Though this is
| more of a feeling, as I obviously cannot verify how it
| actually felt to read it back then.
| janee wrote:
| Haha snap! Will def check out end of eternity. Happy reading
| :)
| janee wrote:
| Haha sounds like me. I used to read as a teenager but stopped,
| thinking it a waste of time.
|
| Only recently rediscovered my love for sci-fi after randomly
| picking up Isaac Asimov's foundation series on a whim while
| waiting for a flight at a book store.
|
| Not saying it's the best thing ever or necessarily what I'd
| recommend. But maybe try and think what genere would be
| interesting to them and then pick one from someone's top x
| list.
|
| I plan on doing that now using this list
| https://youtu.be/pP0XnfC1jVM and am very keen to build a
| bookshelf now haha
| bckr wrote:
| Hello from someone who wrote something very similar in this
| thread!
| grantcas wrote:
| It's becoming clear that with all the brain and consciousness
| theories out there, the proof will be in the pudding. By this I
| mean, can any particular theory be used to create a human adult
| level conscious machine. My bet is on the late Gerald Edelman's
| Extended Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. The lead group in
| robotics based on this theory is the Neurorobotics Lab at UC at
| Irvine. Dr. Edelman distinguished between primary
| consciousness, which came first in evolution, and that humans
| share with other conscious animals, and higher order
| consciousness, which came to only humans with the acquisition
| of language. A machine with primary consciousness will probably
| have to come first.
|
| What I find special about the TNGS is the Darwin series of
| automata created at the Neurosciences Institute by Dr. Edelman
| and his colleagues in the 1990's and 2000's. These machines
| perform in the real world, not in a restricted simulated world,
| and display convincing physical behavior indicative of higher
| psychological functions necessary for consciousness, such as
| perceptual categorization, memory, and learning. They are based
| on realistic models of the parts of the biological brain that
| the theory claims subserve these functions. The extended TNGS
| allows for the emergence of consciousness based only on further
| evolutionary development of the brain areas responsible for
| these functions, in a parsimonious way. No other research I've
| encountered is anywhere near as convincing.
|
| I post because on almost every video and article about the
| brain and consciousness that I encounter, the attitude seems to
| be that we still know next to nothing about how the brain and
| consciousness work; that there's lots of data but no unifying
| theory. I believe the extended TNGS is that theory. My
| motivation is to keep that theory in front of the public. And
| obviously, I consider it the route to a truly conscious
| machine, primary and higher-order.
|
| My advice to people who want to create a conscious machine is
| to seriously ground themselves in the extended TNGS and the
| Darwin automata first, and proceed from there, by applying to
| Jeff Krichmar's lab at UC Irvine, possibly. Dr. Edelman's
| roadmap to a conscious machine is at
| https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.10461
| sifar wrote:
| It depends on what their interests are. For this person,
| perhaps something in science fiction. I second Asimov,
| especially the robot & foundation series. Or may be Dune.
| michaelsbradley wrote:
| _The Man Who Was Thursday_
|
| https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1695/1695-h/1695-h.htm
| novok wrote:
| That person is just on a personal mission right now. Once he
| has achieved his internal goal, the space for leisure will
| start opening up to him. People who like video games, but are
| on a mission about their new thing don't really feel like they
| want to play video games, even though they played them a lot in
| their past for example.
|
| Also some people are just missing things neurologically that
| make certain things compelling for most people. Some people
| just don't care for music much because it doesn't do much for
| them and concerts are kind of confusing enjoyment wise. Same
| with many people in software for watching sports, they're just
| not that into it.
|
| For others, it moves them greatly. Maybe he doesn't create the
| internal world required for fiction when he reads fiction.
|
| So either he is on a mission (people who are noticeably good at
| something tend to be) or they are just missing the thing that
| would make it enjoyable for them.
| writeinpencils wrote:
| sneak wrote:
| Stranger In A Strange Land is the chart-topper. The Moon Is A
| Harsh Mistress is my personal favorite.
|
| Casablanca is also up there.
| trane_project wrote:
| You aren't going to change his mind. What needs changing is his
| heart.
| emj wrote:
| I've had the same experience; and I see no one recommendation
| that will make someone appreciate literature. The argument I
| heard from a younger AI researcher was that books/stories are
| just a collection of tropes that get reused over and over. For
| me it's easier to just recommend Dostojevsky, or perhaps a
| couple of dystopian classics. Even then not everyone will
| understand how literature is not just about information which
| become a story.
|
| For me Crime and Punishment was perhaps a bit painful for me as
| a teenager I remember entering the same state of mind as the
| main character Raskolnikov from reading it, but it was also a
| good capstone to connect the feeling from books by Boje,
| Strindberg and Chekhov.
| e12e wrote:
| Many good tips so far in this thread. If your friend reads a
| lot of papers, they might be able to "leap" into classics
| without being bogged down by the language and sometimes dense
| prose - but I'd still err on the side of accessible for getting
| someone into reading for pleasure.
|
| I'd recommend for example (in no particular order - just some
| great books imnho):
|
| Earthsea quartet by LeGuin
|
| Dune by Herbert
|
| South of the Border by Murakami
|
| Islands in the Net by Sterling
|
| Foundation trilogy by Asimov
|
| Speed of Dark, by Moon
|
| Accelerando, by Stross
|
| Murderbot diaries, by Wells
|
| A Fire Upon the Deep, by Vinge (and Rainbow's End by same)
|
| 2312, by Robinson
|
| And many more, I'm sure :)
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Phillip Dicks short stories can be read again and again.
| There are plenty of "minor" ones that haven't been made into
| movies.
| jmartrican wrote:
| Crime And Punishment I would recommend, but only because I have
| not yet read Don Quixote.
| layer8 wrote:
| As someone who finds most fiction to take much too long to get
| to any interesting points, I'd like to recommend Greg Egan's
| _Axiomatic_ , a collection of thought-provoking SF short
| stories.
| arrow7000 wrote:
| I will always upvote a Greg Egan comment. An incredible
| author. He's changed the way I see the world.
| pythko wrote:
| I'd recommend Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
| [0]. It's often billed as "speculative fiction", and I'd
| describe it as a series of short stories that define worlds
| slightly-to-extremely dissimilar to ours, and explores what
| that means to the people who live in them. I recall the stories
| being fun because there's some amount of guessing what will
| come next in the worldbuilding, and imagining what makes sense
| within the rules he's establishing, but he also drenches the
| stories in humanity, and many of them are quite emotional.
|
| If you're trying to get him to read a classic specifically,
| maybe it would help to start with some non-fiction pieces.
| David Foster Wallace has an essay on what makes Dostoevsky
| great and worth reading [1]. And there are plenty of other
| essays and books out there on "why read the classics." If you
| think presenting your case through the lens of scientific rigor
| would be helpful, there are numerous studies showing that
| reading fiction increases empathy with others [2] (and if
| that's not appealing to him, you're probably in for a very long
| and uphill battle). For a classic recommendation, I think that
| similar to the article, Crime and Punishment is a good choice.
| It's pretty approachable language-wise, it's not crazy long,
| and it hits all those points of universal themes, some humor,
| and a deep empathy from the author to his main character.
|
| ---
|
| [0]
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/223380.Stories_of_Your_L...
|
| [1] https://www.villagevoice.com/2019/07/04/feodors-guide-
| joseph...
|
| [2] https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/how-reading-fiction-
| in...
| pyuser583 wrote:
| I thought you said "define words slightly-to-extremely-
| dissimilar to ours."
|
| That sounded interesting. But it was "worlds", not "words."
| alfor wrote:
| You need to dig deeper, only ask questions.
|
| What is his current view of the world of humans, etc.
|
| Once you have a grasp of that, there is probably a fiction that
| can show him how his vision is incomplete.
|
| We are after knowledge and to be useful and interesting the new
| knowledge need to be just a bit farther than we are at the
| moment. (zone of proximal development)
|
| Not a book, but for AI I enjoyed watching Joshua Bach interview
| (consciousness is a simulation)
|
| I agree that most movies are a waste of time at the moment.
| They mostly repeat the same propaganda.
| layer8 wrote:
| > We are after knowledge and to be useful and interesting the
| new knowledge need to be just a bit farther than we are at
| the moment. (zone of proximal development)
|
| I feel like I've run out of new proximal ideas. I used to
| devour (not only) science-fiction, but now I find it very
| hard to find anything whose concepts I'm not already familiar
| with. Or you have to read through 400 pages to get to just
| one interesting idea or plot point, and you can't tell a
| priori if that will even happen.
| Bakary wrote:
| The irony is that if all the highly intelligent and capable
| researchers, capitalists, and knowledge workers read more
| fiction the world would probably be slightly less dystopian
| than it currently is
| closedloop129 wrote:
| The world could also improve if the readers of fiction would
| increase their engagement in research, business and
| knowledge.
| pas wrote:
| Meh, that's wishful thinking. Fiction is not a silver bullet.
| Elon Musk loves fiction, did not make him a decent human
| being.
| badtension wrote:
| Loves fiction as in Iron Man is his favorite avenger?
| XorNot wrote:
| He's an AI researcher, tell him to read _2001_ by Arthur C.
| Clake. He doesn 't need to read "the classics" he needs to read
| something proximal to his interests and then figure out which
| strands he'd like to follow from there.
|
| "The Classics" are at this point literary archeology: they've
| influenced a lot, but unless you're actually inspired to follow
| that chain back they're just going to wind up seeming "samey"
| to things that came after because they were already heavily
| referenced, extrapolated, deconstructed and their essential
| ideas endlessly debated.
| weberer wrote:
| >he thought fiction (books but also movies etc) was a waste of
| his time: there was nothing to be gained there
|
| I agree with him for the most part. However, enjoying something
| while wasting time is its own reward.
| cehrlich wrote:
| Great question. I always recommend Anna Karenina as the one
| book everyone should read, but maybe it's actually a terrible
| thing to recommend to someone who Doesn't Like Reading.
|
| I don't have an answer for you, but you got me thinking :)
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| Sin2x wrote:
| Is the crime of desperation really a crime?...
| dvt wrote:
| I used to like Taleb, but his cult is getting out of hand.
| Really? You needed Taleb to explain why the _classics_ are good
| reading? Why literature that has been treasured for the _entirety
| of human history_ is valuable? Get a grip. Mix that faux-
| intellectualism--slash--nouveau-englightenment with gross
| oversimplifications and you have a Taleb cultist.
|
| > From Communist Russia's collapse due to Marxism...
|
| I'm no Russian sympathizer, but this is such an
| oversimplification it borders on parody. The irony being that
| this follows a spiel about the world being complex. Maybe this is
| parody and I'm just too dense.
| kcatskcolbdi wrote:
| Taleb is another in a long line of people who have accomplished
| very little outside of selling themselves as a person who
| Really Understands The WorldTM.
|
| His central thesis that models can't account for everything
| is............................painfully obvious. He's Malcolm
| Gladwell if Malcom Gladwell's selling point was that he
| predicted that, during obvious market bubbles, those bubbles
| would pop.
| brnaftr361 wrote:
| To me this is non-sequitur.
|
| If it was so obvious, no institution would rely on the model,
| nor would people rely on institutions that use the models.
|
| Objectively there would be a perpetual hedge - and that is
| how it is from the perspective of a scientist - but from the
| perspective of practitioners of theory, the model presents an
| accurate enough picture that it possesses a degree of truth
| which is illusory. But even with some arbitrarily defined 99%
| success, you can never predict when the 1% failure will
| occur, and if we allow Mandelbrot's postulate
|
| Now in things like celestial bodies and their trajectories -
| it's relegated to some distant inanity that extraordinarily
| curious people have derived, getting it wrong doesn't change
| the way the planets revolve around the sun.
|
| In the facets of civilization which they can affect, such as
| economics, they become a _serious_ hazard, because they can
| and _do_ affect the way the planet moves. It 's a pernicious
| effect, that were it so known and obvious, would be forcibly
| relegated to oblivion. When probability is measured in
| infinitesimal fractions of continuous time a 1% fail rate
| becomes _very_ substantial, and especially when it isn 't
| accounted for in every dimension, to give an example:
|
| "The "spreads" between brokers' bid and ask prices widened
| sharply--as much as 19 percent above the industry's norms
| (that translates into an instantaneous windfall to any broker
| who called it right, and near-ruin to those who got it
| wrong). The turmoil spread around the globe: The Hong Kong
| index fell 14 percent, London 9 percent. In the final twenty-
| four minutes before the New York market closed at 3:30,
| prices plummeted at an average rate of 0.10 percent a minute,
| or 6 percent an hour, the SEC calculated. Put that into
| perspective: The value of American business was falling $100
| million a second. The next morning, prices roared in the
| opposite direction even faster. _But the fastest action of
| all concentrated into three isolated minutes in the whole
| twenty-four hours: between 3:12 and 3:14 p.m. New York time,
| and between 3:24 and 3:25 p.m. This was no mere financial
| storm. It was a hurricane._ "
|
| -Mandelbrot, _The (mis)Behavior of Markets_
|
| Your position is also highly reductionist, Taleb covers a lot
| of broad ground, including his own models, which are duly
| hedged from his perspective as a staunch empiricist.
| jmartrican wrote:
| I agree. Taleb's book have really opened up my eyes. But that's
| just one of lives many lessons. Take the lesson and move on. No
| need to make a cult of it.
| ordu wrote:
| _> You needed Taleb to explain why the classics are good
| reading? Why literature that has been treasured for the
| entirety of human history is valuable?_
|
| Classics are good reading because every new generation of
| readers can find there something valuable. Every new generation
| of readers can find something new, or at least rediscover
| something old. Everyone find in classics their own things.
|
| If the author sees Dostoevsky through the lens of a modern
| author (Taleb), the better for Dostoevsky. It means he is still
| relevant.
| libertine wrote:
| I see it the other way around: classics boil things down
| close to what makes us human, and that has no time boundary.
|
| It will always be relevant and insightful, no matter the
| state of some human constructs, or new society standards - in
| the end human condition will always be with us.
| dvt wrote:
| > It means he is still relevant.
|
| Yeah, that's kind of my point. Of _course_ he 's still
| relevant, he's _Dostoevsky_. I 'm in the middle of Moby Dick.
| Not because Taleb (or Jordan Peterson, or any other twitter
| "intellectual") told me about this cool 19th century author
| named Herman Melville, but because, you know, it's _Moby_
| freakin ' _Dick_.
| ordu wrote:
| _> Of course he 's still relevant, he's Dostoevsky._
|
| It is a theoretical prediction: Dostoevsky will be relevant
| forever.
|
| When someone reads Dostoevsky and sees Taleb's ideas there,
| it is not an insult to Dostoevsky, it is an evidence
| supporting the theory.
| Bakary wrote:
| You should be more worried about Taleb being remembered in 50
| years than Dostoevsky
| ordu wrote:
| Why should I be worried about that? Taleb is remembered
| now, it is relevant now, and it makes people think about
| Taleb now. So why not to try to understand Taleb deeper by
| reading Dostoevsky? If Taleb will fail to be relevant in 50
| years, then no one would try to do it then. And what? Why
| should it worry me?
| Bakary wrote:
| What I meant is that whether Taleb is a conduit to
| Dostoevsky or not has no bearing on the latter's
| continued relevance. Dostoevsky's relevance is not in any
| doubt but Taleb's is (or any other similar author).
|
| The GP was a bit hyperbolic but I am inclined to agree
| with their viewpoint. The intellectual trend they are
| highlighting (which goes way beyond Taleb) has real
| consequences because it is so prevalent among tech
| workers and capital owners who have enormous influence on
| modern life.
| c0mptonFP wrote:
| > > From Communist Russia's collapse due to Marxism...
|
| The delivery of this nonchalant line in particular made me
| cringe hard.
| devonallie wrote:
| I think it reveals a deep naivete about the author that they
| can simply boil things down to "Marxism bad". However, they
| do seem to be learning that there is value in not being a
| STEMLord.
| pas wrote:
| Proper STEMlord doctrine holds that Marxism is not even
| wrong. Also, obviously, the views/ideas of Marx turned out
| to be correct (well supported by empiricism) are just part
| of economics and sociology.
| [deleted]
| narrator wrote:
| One thing that's weird about Dostoevsky is that there are so many
| characters and their relationships with each other are very
| complex. "The Idiot" , ironically, was one of the more
| complicated books, IMHO. It made me wonder if the average Russian
| back in the 19th century had the ability to hold this chess like
| complexity in their heads or Dostoevsky just made everyone in the
| book unrealistically intelligent.
| odd_noises wrote:
| Appreciate the suggestion. I love human nature books but haven't
| actually stopped to read one since I finished 48 Laws of Power
| and Art of Seduction
| ordu wrote:
| _> Unlike scientific knowledge, Dostoevsky doesn 't propose a
| model with a degree of accuracy and best practices on how to
| apply the model._
|
| Isn't a case study is a part of science?
|
| Please correct me if I'm wrong. One can study one particular case
| in depth and call themself a scientist. Dostoevsky is not a
| scientist because he made up his stories instead of gathering
| data on real cases, not because his stories cannot be replicated.
|
| Experimental science is good, but it applicable only after a
| researcher came up with a hypothesis and hypothesis can be
| formulated if there is some theory. It is very restrictive, just
| like the author of the blog post writes. But where theories and
| hypotheses come from? From preliminary research, in particular
| from case studies. These case studies are also scientific
| knowledge, aren't they?
| somenameforme wrote:
| I would say that the most fundamental core of science is based
| upon exactly two things:
|
| - _Novel predictions_ : Predictions of things (the more the
| better) that would not be expected to happen normally (and the
| more unlikely the better), but would happen only (or as close
| to "only" as possible) if your hypothesis is correct. The sun
| rising again tomorrow is not a prediction, but the sun _not_
| rising tomorrow most certainly would be!
|
| - _Falsifiability_ : A hypothesis needs to be able to be
| falsified, by which it can be safely assumed to be wrong. This
| is most often simply a failure of the novel predictions to
| emerge, but the more failure conditions for your hypothesis -
| the "stronger" it becomes.
|
| ---
|
| The path to get there and anything beyond that is largely
| inconsequential. For instance, much of Einstein's work for
| instance was largely driven by simply 'thinking it up.' When
| publishing his most fundamental works, he had absolutely no
| access to any unique resources, knowledge, or ability to carry
| out significant studies. He was working in a patent office as a
| low level inspector!
|
| Maybe if you squint hard enough, you might claim what he did
| was a scientific case study. On the other hand, there are also
| the more common contemporary "case studies" of the sort of
| where you run a quick survey on Amazon Turk and then make
| grand, largely unfalsifiable, claims based solely on that with
| 0 meaningful predictive value. I would not call that science.
| ordu wrote:
| _> Maybe if you squint hard enough, you might claim what he
| did was a scientific case study._
|
| If Einstein gathered facts about reality then it might be a
| case study. If he didn't then it was not a case study by the
| definition of a case study.
| pas wrote:
| > Dostoevsky doesn't propose a model
|
| ... but doesn't he? Isn't his model is that given this and this
| circumstances people will do this and this (eg. commit crimes
| and reflect/regret)?
| armitron wrote:
| Besides Dostoevsky, there is abundant wisdom and deep truths to
| be found in the classics of Christianity. The apologetics of C.S.
| Lewis (Screwtape Letters, The Problem with Pain, The Great
| Divorce), Augustine's Confessions and City of God, Seven Storey
| Mountain by Thomas Merton and G.K. Chesterton's Everlasting Man.
|
| These are seldom read (or known) by young people today and I see
| that as a tragedy. Western spirituality was demolished and
| nothing substantial has emerged to fill the void left, besides a
| coterie of self-help charlatans and intellectual tricksters, with
| the predictable results that we see all around us today.
|
| This is also something that Nassim Taleb (a voracious reader and
| lifelong student of the Western classics but also an Orthodox
| Christian) frequently outlines.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| I re-read Screwtape Letters some 10-12 years later at the age
| of 40 and was floored by how accurately depicted the various
| maladaptive behaviors (eg sins) within myself.
|
| Sometimes, I'd have to put the book down and do something else
| because it hit so close to home.
|
| A beautiful, timeless work.
| Bakary wrote:
| I have delved into the very literature you describe, and it's
| not simply an issue of 'kids these days'. What all these works
| have in common is that they are replete with thoughtful
| insights about human nature, but fail to convincingly present
| Christianity as the solution. They tend to simply drop it on
| the reader without explaining the logical leap or why similar
| but competing belief systems couldn't also play the same role.
| felix318 wrote:
| I would say if the words of Christ are not enough to convince
| someone, who else could possibly say it better?
|
| I've read lots of Chesterton and CS Lewis, and they didn't
| change my perception of Christianity a single bit. What they
| did though was expose the enormous inconsistencies of the
| materialistic worldview. It's not an argument for
| Christianity as much as a critique of its critics.
| quesera wrote:
| > I would say if the words of Christ are not enough to
| convince someone, who else could possibly say it better?
|
| Christ didn't write anything.
|
| The words attributed to him, a few hundred years later, are
| inconsistent and unreliable.
|
| I'd love to hear from the man. I'm pretty unimpressed by
| those who claim to represent him.
| scrubs wrote:
| A _programmer_perspective_ on classic literature? This is why
| English majors who don't like nerds. I agree.
| [deleted]
| ashika wrote:
| i also reacted negatively to the title but found the article to
| be redemptively unpretentious. i think any fan of dostoevsky
| would agree with his conclusions and be happy that this robot
| found a heart.
| starkd wrote:
| Except today many english majors don't read enough of the
| classics.
| carabiner wrote:
| I tried to but C&P was a struggle. I've never gotten more than 50
| pages in. In this age of tiny attention spans how do you guys do
| it? I loved Anna Karenina and have read it cover to cover 4x, but
| also could not do War & Peace.
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