The more accurate the map, the more it resembles the territory. The most accurate map possible would be the territory, and this would be perfectly accurate and perfectly useless.
This quote hides a subtle equivocation, which it relies on to jump from “you have X” to “you do not have X” without us noticing.
If I have a map I can look at it, draw marks on it and make plans. I can also tear it to pieces and analyse it with a mass spectrometer without it damaging the territory. Make the map I start with more accurate and I can draw on it in more detail and make more accurate analysis. Make the map nearly perfect and I can get nearly perfect information from the map without destroying breaking anything in the territory. Moving from ‘nearly perfect’ to ‘perfect’ does not mean “Oh, actually you don’t have one territory and also one map. You only have this one territory”.
As a practical example consider a map of a bank I am considering robbing. I could have blueprint of the building layout. I could have detailed photographs. Or I could have a perfect to-scale clone of the building accurate in every detail. That ‘map’ sounds rather useful to me.
isn’t Gaiman the guy who wrote Doctor Who episodes?
Many, many writers have written for Doctor Who. Gaiman has done many, many things in his writing career besides writing for Doctor Who. And Doctor Who is a cultural phenomenon larger than any trite dismissal of it.
Whether or not it’s a large cultural phenomenon has nothing to do with how sensible the material is. It’s actually probably brilliant fantasy I would agree, but if I’m looking for good sci-fi it’s a bore fest.
I know this is probably an ad hominem but isn’t Gaiman the guy who wrote Doctor Who episodes? The worst sci-fi show ever.
Doctor Who is one of my favourite shows (top five, higher if we count only shows that are still running.) I don’t know to what extent knowledge of our different preferences regarding Doctor Who could be used to predict differences in our evaluations of the rationality of a given Gaiman quote.
Oh I completely agree. It’s just my experience of Doctor Who has been that it’s a well of irrational story lines. For example why would the TARDIS have a soul?
It’s just my experience of Doctor Who has been that it’s a well of irrational story lines.
There does seem to be an awful lot of arbitrariness involved in the plotlines. For whatever reason it doesn’t seem to contain much of the particular kind of irrationality that I personally detest so for me it is just a fun adventure with increasingly pretty girls.
For example why would the TARDIS have a soul?
It is closer to an extremely advanced horse than an extremely advanced car. That doesn’t bother me too much. Some of the arbitrary ‘rules’ of time travel are more burdensome.
What gets me is that you can change the past except when you can’t. They’ve tried to explain it away using “fixed points” which can’t be changed but even that doesn’t hold together.
For instance, the Doctor just admitted that he could change things that he thought he couldn’t change and 1) brought back Gallifrey from the Time War, and 2) brought it back into our universe prevent his death. If I were him, this would be the point where I’d say “Maybe I should go and see if I can bring back Rose’s father too. Then I can start on Astrid, and maybe that girl from Waters of Mars”.
And Gaiman’s episode was bizarre. he had the Tardis acting like a stereotypical wife when at the same time the Tardis crew included an actual husband and wife and they didn’t act towards each other like that. And if the Tardis is sentient there’s no reason he couldn’t hook a voice box into it, except that doing so, thus actually following the logical implications of the Tardis being sentient, would mess up the rest of the series. That episode was just a blatant case of someone wanting to write his pet fan theory into the show and getting to do so because he is Neil Gaiman.
The series also takes a negative attitude towards immortality, despite the Doctor living for a long time.
I’m also sick and tired of the Doctor deciding that a problem whose only obvious solution is violence and killing can be magically solved if he just refuses to accept that the solution is violence and killing. In the real world, such a policy would lead to even more killing.
For instance, the Doctor just admitted that he could change things that he thought he couldn’t change and 1) brought back Gallifrey from the Time War, and 2) brought it back into our universe prevent his death. If I were him, this would be the point where I’d say “Maybe I should go and see if I can bring back Rose’s father too. Then I can start on Astrid, and maybe that girl from Waters of Mars”.
puts on Doctor Who nerd hat
Those were two different forms of “can’t change this thing”. The time lock prevented him from interfering with the time war at all, to the point where he couldn’t even visit—an artificial area-denial system. Fixed points, on the other hand, are … vague, but essentially they are natural (?) phenomena where Fate will arbitrarily (?) ensure you can never change this thing. They serve to allow for time travel stories designed for can’t-change-the-past systems of time travel, Oedipus Rex (or time-turner) style.
The Doctor has tried to change fixed points, in The Waters of Mars. It didn’t go well, and was portrayed as him going a bit mad with hubris.
The series also takes a negative attitude towards immortality, despite the Doctor living for a long time.
Does it?
It seems to me that it takes a neutral stance; immortality is unquestionably good for individuals (even the Master! He’s evil!), but most of the ways to achieve it are governed by sci-fi genre convention that Things Will Go Wrong, and people don’t seem motivated to share it with humanity much.
I’m also sick and tired of the Doctor deciding that a problem whose only obvious solution is violence and killing can be magically solved if he just refuses to accept that the solution is violence and killing. In the real world, such a policy would lead to even more killing.
Well … yeah. That’s really very annoying, and the writers seem to have latched onto it recently.
Then again, this is the same character who, y’know, killed everyone in the Time War. And showed he was willing to do it again in the anniversary special, even if he found a Third Option before they actually did it.
And, hey! The TARDIS was always intelligent. And it’s location in mind-space clearly isn’t designed for human interaction, even when “possessing” a rewritten human brain. And she wasn’t a stereotypical wife. And …
takes off Doctor Who nerd hat
OK, that’s probably enough offtopic nitpicking for one day.
Well, this is sort of off-topic, but on the other hand, a lot of this has to do with the side the show takes on topics of LW interest.
Those were two different forms of “can’t change this thing”.
He didn’t just think he couldn’t change the destruction of Gallifrey because he was locked out of visiting. In the anniversary special, he was there, but first decided he couldn’t change history and had to let the destruction proceed as he had previously done it. He later got an epiphany and decided he could change history by just making it look like the planet was destroyed.
Likewise, in the Christmas special he couldn’t change his own death because he had already seen its effects and knew it was going to happen. He was there—he wasn’t locked out or unable to visit.
If he could get around that for his own death, it’s about time he start doing it for all the others.
Then again, this is the same character who, y’know, killed everyone in the Time War. And showed he was willing to do it again in the anniversary special, even if he found a Third Option before they actually did it.
It’s not the character so much as the story. The story clearly sends the message that it’s a bad idea to do such things and that there always is a third option.
This quote hides a subtle equivocation, which it relies on to jump from “you have X” to “you do not have X” without us noticing.
If I have a map I can look at it, draw marks on it and make plans. I can also tear it to pieces and analyse it with a mass spectrometer without it damaging the territory. Make the map I start with more accurate and I can draw on it in more detail and make more accurate analysis. Make the map nearly perfect and I can get nearly perfect information from the map without destroying breaking anything in the territory. Moving from ‘nearly perfect’ to ‘perfect’ does not mean “Oh, actually you don’t have one territory and also one map. You only have this one territory”.
As a practical example consider a map of a bank I am considering robbing. I could have blueprint of the building layout. I could have detailed photographs. Or I could have a perfect to-scale clone of the building accurate in every detail. That ‘map’ sounds rather useful to me.
Imprecision is not the only purpose of a map.
I know this is probably an ad hominem but isn’t Gaiman the guy who wrote Doctor Who episodes? The worst sci-fi show ever.
Many, many writers have written for Doctor Who. Gaiman has done many, many things in his writing career besides writing for Doctor Who. And Doctor Who is a cultural phenomenon larger than any trite dismissal of it.
Whether or not it’s a large cultural phenomenon has nothing to do with how sensible the material is. It’s actually probably brilliant fantasy I would agree, but if I’m looking for good sci-fi it’s a bore fest.
He was a guest writer a couple times. He’s better known for fantasy novels and comics.
Doctor Who is one of my favourite shows (top five, higher if we count only shows that are still running.) I don’t know to what extent knowledge of our different preferences regarding Doctor Who could be used to predict differences in our evaluations of the rationality of a given Gaiman quote.
Oh I completely agree. It’s just my experience of Doctor Who has been that it’s a well of irrational story lines. For example why would the TARDIS have a soul?
There does seem to be an awful lot of arbitrariness involved in the plotlines. For whatever reason it doesn’t seem to contain much of the particular kind of irrationality that I personally detest so for me it is just a fun adventure with increasingly pretty girls.
It is closer to an extremely advanced horse than an extremely advanced car. That doesn’t bother me too much. Some of the arbitrary ‘rules’ of time travel are more burdensome.
What gets me is that you can change the past except when you can’t. They’ve tried to explain it away using “fixed points” which can’t be changed but even that doesn’t hold together.
For instance, the Doctor just admitted that he could change things that he thought he couldn’t change and 1) brought back Gallifrey from the Time War, and 2) brought it back into our universe prevent his death. If I were him, this would be the point where I’d say “Maybe I should go and see if I can bring back Rose’s father too. Then I can start on Astrid, and maybe that girl from Waters of Mars”.
And Gaiman’s episode was bizarre. he had the Tardis acting like a stereotypical wife when at the same time the Tardis crew included an actual husband and wife and they didn’t act towards each other like that. And if the Tardis is sentient there’s no reason he couldn’t hook a voice box into it, except that doing so, thus actually following the logical implications of the Tardis being sentient, would mess up the rest of the series. That episode was just a blatant case of someone wanting to write his pet fan theory into the show and getting to do so because he is Neil Gaiman.
The series also takes a negative attitude towards immortality, despite the Doctor living for a long time.
I’m also sick and tired of the Doctor deciding that a problem whose only obvious solution is violence and killing can be magically solved if he just refuses to accept that the solution is violence and killing. In the real world, such a policy would lead to even more killing.
puts on Doctor Who nerd hat
Those were two different forms of “can’t change this thing”. The time lock prevented him from interfering with the time war at all, to the point where he couldn’t even visit—an artificial area-denial system. Fixed points, on the other hand, are … vague, but essentially they are natural (?) phenomena where Fate will arbitrarily (?) ensure you can never change this thing. They serve to allow for time travel stories designed for can’t-change-the-past systems of time travel, Oedipus Rex (or time-turner) style.
The Doctor has tried to change fixed points, in The Waters of Mars. It didn’t go well, and was portrayed as him going a bit mad with hubris.
Does it?
It seems to me that it takes a neutral stance; immortality is unquestionably good for individuals (even the Master! He’s evil!), but most of the ways to achieve it are governed by sci-fi genre convention that Things Will Go Wrong, and people don’t seem motivated to share it with humanity much.
Well … yeah. That’s really very annoying, and the writers seem to have latched onto it recently.
Then again, this is the same character who, y’know, killed everyone in the Time War. And showed he was willing to do it again in the anniversary special, even if he found a Third Option before they actually did it.
And, hey! The TARDIS was always intelligent. And it’s location in mind-space clearly isn’t designed for human interaction, even when “possessing” a rewritten human brain. And she wasn’t a stereotypical wife. And …
takes off Doctor Who nerd hat
OK, that’s probably enough offtopic nitpicking for one day.
Well, this is sort of off-topic, but on the other hand, a lot of this has to do with the side the show takes on topics of LW interest.
He didn’t just think he couldn’t change the destruction of Gallifrey because he was locked out of visiting. In the anniversary special, he was there, but first decided he couldn’t change history and had to let the destruction proceed as he had previously done it. He later got an epiphany and decided he could change history by just making it look like the planet was destroyed.
Likewise, in the Christmas special he couldn’t change his own death because he had already seen its effects and knew it was going to happen. He was there—he wasn’t locked out or unable to visit.
If he could get around that for his own death, it’s about time he start doing it for all the others.
I don’t believe that. For instance, look at the Doctor’s lecture to Cassandra (several years ago). Furthermore, the genre convention that immortality goes wrong is part and parcel of how much of the genre opposes immortality. Sci-fi loves to lecture the audience on how something is wrong in real life by showing those things going wrong for fantasy reasons (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SpaceWhaleAesop and http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FantasticAesop).
It’s not the character so much as the story. The story clearly sends the message that it’s a bad idea to do such things and that there always is a third option.
It’s all burdensome to me.