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Kawoomba comments on Harry Yudkowsky and the Methods of Postrationality: Chapter One: Em Dashes Colons and Ellipses, Littérateurs Go Wild - Less Wrong
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Comments (34)
Thanks for the laugh. The idea of self-aware characters is an interesting one. If you take your main characters seriously, it shouldn't be long until they're convinced they're either insane or in a simulation centered on them. Especially given smart characters, there's a suspension of disbelief in them not noticing that the world is only a quest-backdrop for them to interact with. Once the protagonists were aware of their plot-powers / plot-armor (which they may interpret as having some reality-altering powers of unknown origin), the author would have little choice but to bend the plot. Not unlike the Hunger-games stand-off threatening suicide. The alternative, effectively lobotomizing the main characters' agency, would be worse than just compromising your story, it would compromise your characters.
In effect, the model of a character you create isn't unlike a tulpa, a voice in your head. If you make them sufficiently smart, a necessary consequence would be some kind of self-awareness, or the very suspension of disbelief you wanted to avoid in the first place ("smart" characters acting dumb).
I wish my author took me seriously.
Sorry, I'll try to do better.
Dear readers, I hope you enjoyed the joke. It was a bit on the obvious side, but that's in line with the James_Miller character as established. Thanks for reading, and sorry for breaking the fourth wall.
Unfortunately I just don't have the processing power to run any of you lot very quickly. You're also simply not as fun as the next several fictional universes I write: you run on strict physics and don't Munchkin things very hard.
That depends on how seriously your author takes you.
Oops! I had been mindlessly assuming that I lived in the basement.
It is precisely dialog like that that keeps you a minor role.
You seem to confuse cause and effect. Oh wait... I must precommit to talk like a major character... But I cannot precommit unless the author writes me that way...
The author can choose to avoid characters with your state of mind, but they can't choose the decisions implied by your state of mind. You can precommit to act like a major character, in which case you won't be a minor character, but you may fail to get in the actual story.
Seriously dude, who writes stuff like that? Maybe your agent can get you something else.
I really appreciate authors who find ways to avoid this problem without making any sacrifices, e.g. condescending to trite self-awareness, which is the sacrifice I make here in weakness. James Joyce is my favorite example. Your works can't harbor too many delusions if you stick to experiences as they are experienced. Even if those experiences are themselves delusions.
Then again, maybe art imitates life more than it seems, at first.
Finding yourself born in what probably amounts to the fulcrum century of human civilization -- check.
Being amongst a ridiculously small portion of humanity whose behavior may directly shape the future of the cosmos -- check.
Being involved -- however peripherally -- with the advent or the delay of self-improving AI -- check.
Noticing that the sky is empty, as if no interference of other civilizations was sought, for the purposes of a simulation -- check. (Non-simulation status would predict a full sky, the easiest explanation of the Fermi paradox being "one of your assumptions (non-simulation status) is wrong".)
(Secretly possessing supernatural abilities wink wink -- can't publicly say.)
Believe that you are in fact in a simulation of a focal point of civilization -- ???.
See what I mean, Will/Harry?
ETA: Imagine Harry realizing that the story he's starring in is actually called "Hairy Potty and the Chamber Pot of Secretions".
Redshirts
Thanks for the recommendation.