Here’s an idea for a novel which I wish someone would write, but which I probably won’t get around to soon.
The setting is slightly-surreal post-apocalyptic. Society collapsed from extremely potent memes. The story is episodic, with the characters travelling to a new place each chapter. In each place, they interact with people whose minds or culture have been subverted in a different way.
This provides a framework for exploring many of the different models of social dysfunction or rationality failures which are scattered around the rationalist blogosphere. For instance, Scott’s piece on scissor statements could become a chapter in which the characters encounter a town at war over a scissor. More possible chapters (to illustrate the idea):
A town of people who insist that the sky is green, and avoid evidence to the contrary really hard, to the point of absolutely refusing to ever look up on a clear day (a refusal which they consider morally virtuous). Also they clearly know exactly which observations would show a blue sky, since they avoid exactly those (similar to the dragon-in-the-garage story).
Middle management of a mazy company continues to have meetings and track (completely fabricated) performance metrics and whatnot at the former company headquarters. None of the company’s actual business exists anymore, but every level of manager is trying to hide this fact from the levels above.
A university department with researchers who spend all of their time p-hacking results from a quantum random noise generator. They have no interest in the fact that their “research” does not tell them anything about the physical world or does not replicate; what does that have to do with Science? Their goal is to publish papers.
A government agency which still has lots of meetings and paperwork and gives Official Recommendations and updates their regulations. They have no interest in the fact that the thing they once regulated (maybe banks?) no longer exists, or the fact that no central government enforces their regulations any more.
An automated school (i.e. video lectures and auto-graded assignments/tests) in which students continue to study hard and stress over their grades and attendance, despite there no longer being anyone in the world who cares.
Something like House of God. A readers’ digest version of House of God could basically be a chapter in its own right, that’s roughly the vibe I have in mind.
A residential area in which “keeping up with the Joneses” has been ramped up to 11, with everyone spending every available resource (and roughly-all waking hours) on massive displays of Christmas lights.
A group trying to save the world by spreading awareness of dangerous memes, but their movement is a dangerous meme of its own and they are spreading it.
A town of people who really want to maximize the number paperclips in the universe (perhaps due to an AI-optimized advertisement), and optimize for that above all else.
A town of people who all do whatever everyone else is doing, on the basis of generalized efficient markets: if there were any better options, then someone would have found it already. None of them ever actually explore, so they’re locked in.
A happy-death-spiral town around some unremarkable object (like an old shoe or something) kept on a pedestal in the town square.
A town full of people convinced by a sophisticated model that the sun will not come up tomorrow. Every day when the sun comes up, they are distressed and confused until somebody adds some more epicycles to the model and releases an updated forecast that the sun will instead fail to come up the next day.
A town in which a lion shows up and starts eating kids, but the whole town is at simulacrum 3, so they spend a lot of time arguing about the lion as a way of signalling group association but they completely forget about the actual lion standing right there, plainly visible, even as it takes a kid right in front of them all.
Witch-hunt town, in which everything is interpreted as evidence of witches. If she claims to be a witch, she’s a witch! If she claims not to be a witch, well that’s what a witch would say, so she’s a witch! Etc.
The generator for these is basically: look for some kind of rationality failure mode (either group or personal), then ramp it up to 11 in a somewhat-surrealist way.
Ideally this would provide an introduction to a lot of key rationalist ideas for newcomers.
A town of anti-inductivists (if something has never happened before, it’s more likely to happen in the future). Show the basic conundrum (“Q: Why can’t you just use induction? A: Because anti-induction has never worked before!”).
A town where nearly all people are hooked to maximally attention grabbing & keeping systems (maybe several of those, keeping people occupied in loops).
Here’s an idea for a novel which I wish someone would write, but which I probably won’t get around to soon.
The setting is slightly-surreal post-apocalyptic. Society collapsed from extremely potent memes. The story is episodic, with the characters travelling to a new place each chapter. In each place, they interact with people whose minds or culture have been subverted in a different way.
This provides a framework for exploring many of the different models of social dysfunction or rationality failures which are scattered around the rationalist blogosphere. For instance, Scott’s piece on scissor statements could become a chapter in which the characters encounter a town at war over a scissor. More possible chapters (to illustrate the idea):
A town of people who insist that the sky is green, and avoid evidence to the contrary really hard, to the point of absolutely refusing to ever look up on a clear day (a refusal which they consider morally virtuous). Also they clearly know exactly which observations would show a blue sky, since they avoid exactly those (similar to the dragon-in-the-garage story).
Middle management of a mazy company continues to have meetings and track (completely fabricated) performance metrics and whatnot at the former company headquarters. None of the company’s actual business exists anymore, but every level of manager is trying to hide this fact from the levels above.
A university department with researchers who spend all of their time p-hacking results from a quantum random noise generator. They have no interest in the fact that their “research” does not tell them anything about the physical world or does not replicate; what does that have to do with Science? Their goal is to publish papers.
A government agency which still has lots of meetings and paperwork and gives Official Recommendations and updates their regulations. They have no interest in the fact that the thing they once regulated (maybe banks?) no longer exists, or the fact that no central government enforces their regulations any more.
An automated school (i.e. video lectures and auto-graded assignments/tests) in which students continue to study hard and stress over their grades and attendance, despite there no longer being anyone in the world who cares.
Something like Parable of the Dammed.
Something like Feynman’s cargo-cults parable or the emporer’s nose parable.
Something like House of God. A readers’ digest version of House of God could basically be a chapter in its own right, that’s roughly the vibe I have in mind.
A residential area in which “keeping up with the Joneses” has been ramped up to 11, with everyone spending every available resource (and roughly-all waking hours) on massive displays of Christmas lights.
A group trying to save the world by spreading awareness of dangerous memes, but their movement is a dangerous meme of its own and they are spreading it.
A town of people who really want to maximize the number paperclips in the universe (perhaps due to an AI-optimized advertisement), and optimize for that above all else.
A town of people who all do whatever everyone else is doing, on the basis of generalized efficient markets: if there were any better options, then someone would have found it already. None of them ever actually explore, so they’re locked in.
A happy-death-spiral town around some unremarkable object (like an old shoe or something) kept on a pedestal in the town square.
A town full of people convinced by a sophisticated model that the sun will not come up tomorrow. Every day when the sun comes up, they are distressed and confused until somebody adds some more epicycles to the model and releases an updated forecast that the sun will instead fail to come up the next day.
A town in which a lion shows up and starts eating kids, but the whole town is at simulacrum 3, so they spend a lot of time arguing about the lion as a way of signalling group association but they completely forget about the actual lion standing right there, plainly visible, even as it takes a kid right in front of them all.
Witch-hunt town, in which everything is interpreted as evidence of witches. If she claims to be a witch, she’s a witch! If she claims not to be a witch, well that’s what a witch would say, so she’s a witch! Etc.
The generator for these is basically: look for some kind of rationality failure mode (either group or personal), then ramp it up to 11 in a somewhat-surrealist way.
Ideally this would provide an introduction to a lot of key rationalist ideas for newcomers.
A town of anti-inductivists (if something has never happened before, it’s more likely to happen in the future). Show the basic conundrum (“Q: Why can’t you just use induction? A: Because anti-induction has never worked before!”).
A town where nearly all people are hooked to maximally attention grabbing & keeping systems (maybe several of those, keeping people occupied in loops).