Submitted by Costanza - Less Wrong

Stupid Questions Open Thread

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 10:23:21 +1100

Submitted by Costanza • 42 votes • 265 comments

This is for anyone in the LessWrong community who has made at least some effort to read the sequences and follow along, but is still confused on some point, and is perhaps feeling a bit embarrassed. Here, newbies and not-so-newbies are free to ask very basic but still relevant questions with the understanding that the answers are probably somewhere in the sequences. Similarly, LessWrong tends to presume a rather high threshold for understanding science and technology. Relevant questions in those areas are welcome as well. Anyone who chooses to respond should respectfully guide the questioner to a helpful resource, and questioners should be appropriately grateful. Good faith should be presumed on both sides, unless and until it is shown to be absent. If a questioner is not sure whether a question is relevant, ask it, and also ask if it's relevant.

265 comments

Christopher Hitchens 1949-2011

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 09:05:16 +1100

Submitted by Costanza • 6 votes • 27 comments

Having been diagnosed with cancer last year, writer Christopher Hitchens has died. He was known as as an outspoken atheist, which is not, in itself, identical to being a committed rationalist in any systematic way. Even so, he seemed to have the virtue of moral courage, the willingness to speak the truth as he saw it, without fear.

27 comments

Rationalist Lord of the Rings fanfiction, newly translated from Russian

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 13:38:38 +1100

Submitted by Costanza • 9 votes • 60 comments

This may be old news to some people, especially the Russian speakers, but I didn't see an article about it here.

In 1999, Kirill Yeskov, a Russian paleontologist, wrote The Last Ringbearer, a 270-page take on Lord of the Rings from the point of view of a medic in Mordor's dying armies who is also a "skeptic and a rationalist." In fact, Mordor represents the forces of reason in this retelling of the story. As a Nazgúl (himself a former mathematician) explains, Mordor is "the little oasis of Reason in which your light-minded civilization had so comfortably nestled." Barad-dur is "that amazing city of alchemists and poets, mechanics and astronomers, philosophers and physicians, the heart of the only civilization in Middle-earth to bet on rational knowledge and bravely pitch its barely adolescent technology against ancient magic."

The story has been newly translated and is available in free PDF form -- in English and the original Russian. There's a recent review from Salon as well.

60 comments