Author: Eneasz

I never know which essays to pick when I do these episodes. There are soooo many of them, and they are all just spectacular. I don’t have any plans to do them all, partly because there’s so many, partly because some of them wouldn’t translate into audio very well (diagrams and such), and partly because quite a few of them are already available (for a small fee). So I’m trying to just pick a few that aren’t a great inferential distance away from an average listener that hasn’t read the Sequences, hopefully ones that such a listener would find enjoyable and interesting enough to maybe go and find the Sequences and read them for themselves. I’m never sure if I’ve done a very good job of that or not.

Yup, Evangelion is the reason I associate apocalyptic quasi-religious anime with old crooner love songs.

Note: I’ll be at the Denver Less Wrong Meetup on Weds Oct 15th, 6:30pm, at Strange Grounds. I’ve been meaning to go to a LW Meetup for a long time, and with one being hosted almost in my backyard by a friend I just plum ran out of excuses. Come hang out with us!

I really like the ending to Trust in God. I’ve never been a fan of “The End” endings. I prefer mine to feel like jumping-off points. IMHO the best ending is one that can be summarized as “and after that nothing was ever the same again.” It leaves an entire world wide open and alive and rich. I keep hearing that the ending of Snow Crash was terrible, but I never would have figured that out on my own. To me it was a perfectly fine ending. I’m very much of the opinion that nothing ever ends, except maybe when you die, and even then it only ends for you.

Request for help: I’m wracking my brain and flogging google trying to find a story, but I’m not having any luck. I figured I’d try here. A few years ago I read a short story about a company that requires its employees to work sealed off from the outside world, to preserve trade secrets. The employees also install a memory lock in their brains, which prevents them from remembering anything that happens in the workplace when they are not at work. These two coworkers really loathe each other, but they don’t know each other outside of work. By happenstance they meet out in the real world and start dating. Shenanigans ensue when they meet in the office again and realize who they are. Worse, one of them is already in a relationship with a different coworker, but of course no one remembers that outside the office. I recall enjoying it quite a bit, maybe someone will have read this and can remember what the story is called, or some way to find it? Or knows someone who may?

Yes, I realize my pronunciation of “Nagato” was all over the place. I apologize for that. With everything else going on I didn’t have time to fix it. :(

Last year I was blown away by a short story by Seth Dickinson called A Plant (Whose Name is Destroyed) (audio). I want to bring it up again here, because it has a very similar premise to Trust In God/Riddle of Kyon – that a godlike being incidentally causes things to happen simply by desiring them. And like TiG/RoK, it’s told from the god’s lover’s perspective. They are very different stories because they explore different aspects of the problem, but at their core they both have the same dilemma. It’s a good read, and I wanted to recommend it.

Upon recalling how much I enjoyed A Plant, I went and checked out Seth Dickinson’s other works. I’ve read over half of them now, and I gotta say – I STRONGLY recommend this author. Many of his works have a very strong transhumanist message, and some could be called rationalist. Honestly, I’m surprised I haven’t already heard his name brought up on LessWrong, or SlateStarCodex, or /r/rational. I’m fixing that this week.

A few of my favorite stories:

Economies of Force – A post-GAI story where humanity made AI that *almost* captures our values, but not quite, and it results in the sort of utopia you might expect from that sort of failure. Shades of Amputation of Destiny and Bostrom’s Empty Disneyland. If anyone can figure out the significance of the name “Loom”, please let me know. It must have been chosen for a reason, but I’m not making the connection.

Sekhmet Hunts the Dying Gnosis: A Computation – A rather literal take on Meditations on Moloch, and/or An Alien God

Morrigan in the Sunglare – Like Bayesians vs Barbarians, told from the PoV of the Barbarians (sort of).

Kumara – a seriously beautiful post-singularity transhumanist story. Just… really beautiful. And murderous.

There’s more. His first novel will be coming out next year. If you haven’t heard of him yet, I’m willing to bet you’ll be hearing about him soon. I, for one, am gonna be reading whatever of his I can.