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David_Gerard comments on February 2012 Media Thread - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: RobertLumley 05 February 2012 02:23PM

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Comment author: David_Gerard 05 February 2012 09:00:53PM *  2 points [-]

Homestuck. Four and a half thousand pages of it. I'm wondering if Andrew Hussie has somehow worked out how to make a manic phase last six years. I need to go back and reread it, when I have way too much time on my hands.

And the Brainbent AU, which is just heartwarming.

Comment author: [deleted] 06 February 2012 12:41:04PM 3 points [-]

This, this, a thousand times this. Homestuck gave me so much insight into human relationships merely by quadrupling my romantic vocabulary.

Comment author: David_Gerard 06 February 2012 04:48:24PM *  1 point [-]

I've actually been wondering about the value of fictional evidence. Particularly reading a pile of Hitchens book reviews, wherein he strongly advocates good fiction for its power to explore and teach you how humans work. Off the top of my head I can think of more accurate methods, but stories are natural to humans so may well be a much more powerful vector than popularisations of psychological research. I'm not entirely convinced by the Hitchens line but was surprised to see him pushing it so vehemently.

Edit: Wei Dai addressed this point a couple of years ago, with Fictional Evidence vs Fictional Insight.

Comment author: DanPeverley 09 February 2012 06:05:09AM 2 points [-]

It's like Andrew Hussie has a list of the things I like, and decided to make to make something perfect with all of them included. The fandom is a bit crazy for me, but I think Homestuck is freakishly well written considering the pace that the pages come out. His characters are incredible, the little details of his descriptions are gems, and the art is nice to look at too. I know people who refuse to read it because they've only been exposed to it via over-zealous fans of the slash-yaoi shipping variety (not all yaoi shippers are crazy, but a lot of crazy fans are yaoi shippers), but it's really a clever and moving piece of unique artwork. For anyone interested in it, I would actually suggest reading Problem Sleuth first though. Ignore the earlier works until you have an appreciation for Hussie.

Comment author: taelor 07 February 2012 09:12:09PM 2 points [-]

So, after some of the more recent updates, I was trying to figure out where Dirk's Auto-Responder falls on the Friendly/Unfriendly AI spectrum, but then it occured to me that he's more of a non-destructive mental upload that an artificial intelligence.

Comment author: David_Gerard 08 February 2012 03:20:43PM -1 points [-]

At least as friendly as any given human.