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Can you recommend similar novels?
Unfortunately, I can’t: this kind of (strangely refreshing) cynicism is, in my limited experience, unique to Peter Watts, and the use of interesting “starfish aliens” seems to be quite rare.
There are, however, other short stories (not novels) of Peter Watts that have a somewhat similar mood , such as Ambassador, but you probably are already aware of them.
Quote from Peter Watts' Blindsight.
About the prospects of a fight against a superintelligence:
Still, I could tell that Bates' presence was a comfort, to the Human members of the crew at least. If you have to go up unarmed against an angry T-rex with a four-digit IQ, it can't hurt to have a trained combat specialist at your side.
At the very least, she might be able to fashion a pointy stick from the branch of some convenient tree.
Besides being fascinating in its own right, such exotic finds are a good test of astronomers’ theories about how planets form. In PH1’s case, its four stars are actually a pair of binaries. Conventional planetary-formation theory holds that worlds condense out of a disc of dust and rubble early in a star’s life. But in this case, “the second binary would sit right at the edge of the protoplanetary disc,” notes Dr Lintott. Computer models suggest that the gravitational influence of the second pair of stars ought to disrupt the disc and prevent the formation of planets. Reality, in this case, disagrees with the models—and that is how science advances.
Source: The Economist's "Babbage" blog, in a post on exoplanets
(Of course, science advances when reality agrees with models too.)
Edited to remove "emphasis added" from the quotation, which I had added originally but have since decided against.
As we learn more and more about the solar system, the reality-check that our theories have to pass becomes more and more stringent. This is one reason why scientists have a habit of opening up old questions that everybody assumed were settled long ago, and deciding that they weren’t. It doesn’t mean the scientists are incompetent: it demonstrates their willingness to contemplate new evidence and re-examine old conclusion in its light. Science certainly does not claim to get things right, but it has a good record of ruling out ways to get things wrong.
-- The Science of Discworld, Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen
I agree that it isn't particularly private, except perhaps in the sense that you technically aren't effecting other people at the time of decision as there aren't those other people yet. But, also, private doesn't mean limited to a solitary individual, or else people wouldn't speak of sex being private. I guess I'd define private as an event that one can limit the involvement (including knowledge of) to those of their choosing. Perhaps possible with raising children but not the norm.
Your definition is near to what I think of when I hear “private”, save that I would add that the event must be consensual for all the people involved. That is: “an activity performed by a set of persons can be considered private only if the direct consequences of the activity are limited to those in the set, and the activity is consensual for all the involved”*.
I may be projecting my own moral intuitions, but I think this is the definition that is informally evoked when there is talk of non-intrusion into others’ private lives; in this case, a right for non-intrusion seems morally defensible. However, the problem in my view is that sometimes the meaning of “private” is extended to situations where the right of non-intrusion is no longer so clearly worthy of defense.
*Actually, I think I would prefer to include sentients into the definition, but I doubt that is a mainstream view at the moment.
A bit too political for LessWrong in my opinion ...
Yet a policy of "poor people should have fewer [X], rich people more" sounds heartless [...]
Indeed it does, any policy proposing new advantages for the rich and disadvantages for the poor sounds heartless, especially if it sounds like it's intruding in people's private lives (and the decision of whether to have kids is pretty darn private).
(I would probably tend to be in favor of such a policy, though a lot depends on how exactly it's implemented, but it's not very surprising that it sounds heartless; it is, but that doesn't make it automatically wrong)
(and the decision of whether to have kids is pretty darn private).
In which sense is it private? A person having X kids will have affected the lives of at least X other persons.
Fiction on mind merging seems high on mysteriousness and hand-waving and low on plausible speculation in my experience. Anyone have any recommendations?
Yeah, the second book has some pretty downer aspects. There's one bit which may particularly interest LW people in that it can be considered n zrgncube sbe jung n ernyyl znyvpvbhf benpyr NV zvtug qb.
V nyfb sbhaq n irel fgebat fvzvynevgl jvgu n znyvpvbhf naq gehgushy Obkrq NV jura ernqvat gur rkcynangvba bs Onfg. Gur nanybtl vf abg cresrpg, ohg vg jnf irel vagrerfgvat naq cnffviryl nevfvat.
The website left me a positive impression. From my cursory exploration, the only thing that stood out negatively was the existence of the subsection of Life Stories inside Media; I think this subsection will need to be handled with care.
- Finishing to program, in Python, an interactive fiction game, targeted at my D&D group. Doing this for fun, to please some friends with whom I have become geographically separated, and to improve my knowledge and programming practices in Python.
- Aiming to take the JLPT N2 this year, I´m starting to focus my studies in order to identify and address what I still need to learn. Having the certificate would look nice on the CV, and passing the examination would surely be personally satisfying.
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Yes, yes it does. Otherwise, what would be the point? There's an infinity of ways to get things wrong; you don't want to spend your life catalouging them.
The word "right" (without the use of modifiers such as “exactly”) might sound too weak and easily satisfiable, but I think the idea is the following: Theories that may seem complete and robust today might be found to be incomplete or wrong in the future. You cannot claim certainty in them, although you can probably claim high confidence under certain conditions.