Death of the Author, but iirc Scott mentioned the point of the Kabbalah in Unsong is the exact opposite—you can connect anything to anything if you try hard enough, so the fact that you can is meaningless.
Of course, this shows the exact problem with using fiction as evidence.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that Scott believed the thing. What I think is that he has particularly strong subtle-pattern-noticing ability and this explains both the contents of UNSONG and the fact that he’s such a great and lucid writer.
you can connect anything to anything if you try hard enough, so the fact that you can is meaningless.
This is a sort of Fallacy of Gray. Some connections are much stronger than others, and connections that jump out between core mythological structures that have lasted across thousands of years deserve attention.
Yes, but I think Scott is very weary of exactly his ability (and other people’s ability) to draw connections between mostly unrelated things, and if he thinks that it’s still an important part of rationality, my model of Scott still thinks that skill should be used with utmost care, and its misapplication is the reason for a large part of weird false things people come to believe.
Death of the Author, but iirc Scott mentioned the point of the Kabbalah in Unsong is the exact opposite—you can connect anything to anything if you try hard enough, so the fact that you can is meaningless.
Of course, this shows the exact problem with using fiction as evidence.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that Scott believed the thing. What I think is that he has particularly strong subtle-pattern-noticing ability and this explains both the contents of UNSONG and the fact that he’s such a great and lucid writer.
This is a sort of Fallacy of Gray. Some connections are much stronger than others, and connections that jump out between core mythological structures that have lasted across thousands of years deserve attention.
Yes, but I think Scott is very weary of exactly his ability (and other people’s ability) to draw connections between mostly unrelated things, and if he thinks that it’s still an important part of rationality, my model of Scott still thinks that skill should be used with utmost care, and its misapplication is the reason for a large part of weird false things people come to believe.
Yeah, that was also my interpretation.
Oh, crypto-Discordianism. I haven’t read Unsong, but does the Law of Fives show up anywhere?