The Finale of the Ultimate Meta Mega Crossover

Eliezer Yudkowsky

So I'd intended this story as a bit of utterly deranged fun, but it got out of control and ended up as a deep philosophical exploration, and now those of you who care will have to wade through the insanity. I'm sorry. I just can't seem to help myself.

I know that writing crossover fanfiction is considered one of the lower levels to which an author can sink. Alas, I've always been a sucker for audacity, and I am the sort of person who couldn't resist trying to top the entire... but never mind, you can see for yourself.

Click on to read my latest story and first fanfiction, a Vernor Vinge x Greg Egan crackfic.

I think of Feynman as the archetypal mad scientist, and while I don't think he happened to love fanfiction (and actually, don't we mean "writes fanfiction"?), I wouldn't have been surprised to have found out that he did and I wouldn't have thought less of him if he did.

I think the real issue is not that "writes fanfiction" is not part of the archetype but that you have (or think others will have) some kind of moral/emotional reaction to "writes fanfiction" that causes you to think about it in different terms than "writes poetry" or "loves functional programming" or "loves stamp collecting" or "loves civil war re-enactments" or whatever.

I think the underlying question is how inauthentic one should be willing to be in order to "present the best image." You and I both love functional programming, but there are many "Enterprise Architects" that would find passion for functional programming weird and suspect, deeming it pointless love of complexity for the sake of obfuscation. Imagine you were a public figure for a software company that marketed mostly to Enterprise Java shops, and somebody tells you that you should consider avoiding writing publicly about functional programming, working on xmonad, participating in haskell-cafe, because it might give potential customers the wrong impression (however stupid that "wrong" impression might be). If you think that "functional programming" and "stamp collecting" and "writing poetry" are more valid "side passions" than writing scifi or fanfiction, can you give a good explanation for why, or is it just a matter of "what most people would think"?

If you think that "functional programming" and "stamp collecting" and "writing poetry" are more valid "side passions" than writing scifi or fanfiction, can you give a good explanation for why, or is it just a matter of "what most people would think"?

But this is a specifically empirical question. Go look around the Internet - what's the predominant view of fanfictioners among non-fanfictioners (who are aware of them)? It is very very negative, I mean, close to furry levels of opprobrium. To give an exampl... (read more)

4Psy-Kosh17y

Besides, don't forget that "there's an insufficient amount of fun in the world" is an EXPLICIT principle and motivation of what Eliezer's doing, right? So, given that he wants to use "mad science" to increase the amount of fun in the world, it's probably useful to see what sorts of fun and goofiness he gets up to, no? (more to the point, if there wasn't any such available, if he was instead all somber and serious, the reaction would be "this way-too-somber-guy is the one that plans on greatly increasing total fun in the world? I wonder what he thinks would count as 'fun'"

22Vladimir_Nesov17y

Robin Hanson wrote about a relevant phenomenon in Why Signals Are Shallow: [...] Thus, people can genuinely dislike their allies having an activity that gives shallow negative impression (feel the dislike, not just deem the activity a mistake), even if they understand this first impression to be incorrect, or that any person giving a minute's thought to the question will come to the same conclusion.

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The Finale of the Ultimate Meta Mega Crossover

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The Finale of the Ultimate Meta Mega Crossover

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