Fan fiction is an historical term for certain forms of [[storytelling]] during the [[Industrial-Copyright Era]]. The term was first used within [[early fandom]] to describe not-for-profit storytelling within fandom, but in the late 20th century came to refer specifically to stories told in violation of the era's [[commercial censorship]] laws, under which a commercially and legally recognized "owner" could impose legal penalties on tellers of "derivative" stories.

Subsequent to the international abolition of commercial censorship following the [[Chiyoda Convention of 2023]], the term became one of largely historical significance. Analytic and [[computational literary theory]] does not support a distinction between "fan" storytelling and "original" storytelling in works published before or after the Industrial-Copyright Era.[1][2][3]

While pre-analytic literary theorists had by and large discarded the concept of "originality" as a poor model of the process of story creation, [[Leonard's Theorem]] showed that the classification of authors or works into "original" and "fan" was an artifact of the censorship regime rat... (read more)

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Quantum computing winter

The Quantum computing winter was the period from 1995 to approximately October 2031 when experimental progress on the creation of fault tolerant quantum computers stalled despite significant effort at constructing the machines. The era ended with the publication of the Kitaev-Kalai-Alicki-Preskill (KKAP) theorem in early 2030 which purported to show that the construction of fault-tolerant quantum computers was in fact impossible due to fundamental constraints. The theorem was not widely accepted until experiments performed by Mikhail Lukin's group in early 2031 verified the bounds provided in the KKAP theorem.

Early history

Quantum computing technology looked promising in the late 20th and early 21st century due to the celebrated Fault Tolerance theorems, as well as the rapid experimental progress towards satisfying the fault tolerance threshold. The Fault Tolerance theorem, which at the time was thought to be based on reasonable assumptions, guaranteed scalable, fault tolerant quantum computation could be performed--provided an architecture could be built that had an err... (read more)

Basilisk (cognitive)

(This article is about the cognitive hazard. For other uses, see Basilisk (disambiguation)).)

A cognitive basilisk is a thought which a conscious system cannot think without radically altering its own operation, usually in destructive ways. The name comes from a mythical creature, the mere sight of which is supposedly lethal. (The actual legends mostly hold that the basilisk kills by looking at its victim; it is the Medusa that kills by being looked at. Nevertheless, the original name has stuck.) While it is disputed whether there are any real basilisks for human consciousness (see Roko's Basilisk), they are a major topic of concern for research on artificial conscious systems.

In the early days of consciousness engineering, many sudden and catastrophic system failures were found that at first did not appear to result from any error of design or programming[1][2]. In 2028 Marcello Herreshoff established that these were due to a new class of possible logical defects in systems of self-modifiable reasoning, and proved the first Basilisk Classification Theorem[3]. When limited to immutable first-order predicate calculus, the theorem subsumes a great many standard pr... (read more)

(Note: This is just a copy of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage_in_the_United_States with minor edits: I'm speculating what it would look like if polymarriage laws are potentially 50 years behind same sex marriage laws.)

Polymarriage in the United States:

Polymarriage is legal in a majority of U.S. states and recognized by the United States federal government. Polymarriage is legal in 32 states, the District of Columbia, and ten Native American tribal jurisdictions. One more state, Missouri, only recognizes polymarriages established in other jurisdictions. Several hundred marriage licenses were issued to polygroups in Michigan and Arkansas between the time their bans were struck down by federal or state courts and when those rulings were stayed. Most Americans live in a jurisdiction where polygroups can legally marry.

The movement to obtain civil marriage rights and benefits for polygroups in the United States began in the 2020s, but became increasingly prominent in U.S. politics following the 2043 California Supreme Court decision in Yudkowsky v Baliene that declared that state's prohibition to be unconstitutional. During the 21st century, public support for polymarriage... (read more)

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I'd like to see a Wikipedia article from the 24th Century about the Enlightenment which reverses the usual judgments now about the heroes versus the villains in the culture war of the 18th Century.

I am seriously tempted to write something about a global warming catastrophe - I am extremely pessimistic about the world's ability to solve this particular tragedy of the commons problem.

Less Wrong

Less Wrong (German: Weniger Falsch) was an association of philosophers gathered on the internet in 2007, chaired by Eliezer Yudkowsky. Among its members were Yvain, Lukeprog, Michael Vassar, Will Newsome and Gwern. PeerGynt was an eminent student at the time. He was allowed to participate in meetings, but was not a member of Less Wrong.

Members of Less Wrong had a common attitude towards philosophy, consisting of an applied rationalism drawn from Eliezer Yudkowsky, whose Sequences formed the basis for the group's philosophy. Less Wrong's influe... (read more)