Steven_Bukal comments on Mundane Magic - Less Wrong

102 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 31 October 2008 04:00PM

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Comment author: AdeleneDawner 30 April 2011 09:36:45PM 2 points [-]

Does this genre have a name, or other googleable traits?

Comment author: Steven_Bukal 30 April 2011 11:48:11PM 8 points [-]

The concept is popular on 4chan's /tg/ board where they're called "humanity" stories or "humanity, fuck yeah" stories. Here's one archive of such threads:

http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=humanity

Comment author: AdeleneDawner 01 May 2011 05:32:40AM 6 points [-]

Most of these have me going "argh, physics/game theory/evolution doesn't work that way!", but there's a few good ones in there. I liked this one and this one in particular, though the former has a fair bit of evolution fail in it.

Comment author: Steven_Bukal 01 May 2011 11:56:29AM 3 points [-]

Agreed, they can definitely get a bit absurd. This one is one of my favourites:

http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/13-TheBalticWarCD/TheBalticWarCD/The%20World%20Turned%20Upside%20Down/0743498747__24.htm

The short story "The Road Not Taken" by Harry Turtledove is also a good one if you can find it.

Comment author: [deleted] 02 June 2011 04:32:33AM *  8 points [-]

I like the "Humans are insane" series of threads.

Humans are pretty close to immune to memetic viral attacks. In other cultures, memetic attacks are devastating weapons of war, that are carefully researched in hidden facilities where the researchers go through daily psychological analysis to keep the attack from escaping- and occasionally it does anyway, and they have to vaporize the sector. Humans use them to sell hamburgers. Human memetics is the flat-out most advanced in the universe, and they don't even have clinical immortality yet. Individual humans can make memetic attacks untrained.

http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=Humans