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<p>Well stated if (and!) densely packed. <br>
</p>
<p>Your conception of F vs SF and invocation of Deutsch's "hard to
vary" are the sorts of ideas I was trying to get to with the idea
of emergent coherence vs literal consistency. <br>
</p>
<p>I like the idea of broad coverage without giving up coherence...
"if everything is possible, then nothing is interesting"? I was
part of an early internet fiction writing group hosted by Orson
Scott Card back in the 90s (Hatrack River) which meant that in
exchange for having lots of possible first-readers of my own work,
I was blessed/burdened with reading a lot of amateur fiction.
The biggest flaw *I* encountered in the
heavily-weighted-toward-fantasy milieu of submissions was this
one... it felt like these inexperienced writers simply enjoyed
(and abused) the license to "coin a new bit of magic" anytime
their protaganist got cornered... that was not very interesting
(to me). On the other hand, I might be too biased toward always
trying to "figure out the hidden logics" which makes (for me) a
good fantastical tale. I'm not big on murder-mysteries, but that
is what seems to carry them to the extent they are carried for
me... the sense that no matter how tangled the evidence may be, I
know/trust that the author (or more to the point, the story
itself) has a hidden logic which will be revealed and it is up to
me to tease it out as best I can. If it is too easy, it isn't
interesting, if it is too hard, it isn't interesting... the best
ones usually have me untangling any number of the tangles but
having at least a few left obscured to me such that I learn
something (about getting away with murder? human nature?) as a
consequence. I may well still be looking (too much) for (too
much) consistency by your measure.</p>
<p>A departure from the Gouldian binary pitting F vs SF might be
David Brin's "<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_Effect">Practice
Effect</a>" where "everything is possible, but you still have to
put in the work!". Zelazny's "Hellriding" felt to be his version
of "putting in the work". When I first read Brin's book I was a
little put off in the way I implied above but I was impressed by
what I called Zelazny's work of "Hard Fantasy". Probably
another word for "hidden logics".<br>
</p>
<p>Speaking of consistency and the adjacent possible. Your talk of
"cone of possibilities" reminds me of HashLife (<a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0167278984902513">Gosper</a>)
and the value of memoization. I never followed through on a
project with Susan Stepney and one of her Grad students to try to
use memoization efficiency as a rough measure of entropy and
therefore "interestingness" in hashlife... One of the unexplored
hypotheses I held was that there were likely finer structure in
Class IV (<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://content.wolfram.com/uploads/sites/34/2020/07/universality-complexity-cellular-automata.pdf">Wolfram</a>)
CA which could be found by mining the metadata from memoization
and back-propogating of complex end-states. I think Kauffman's <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0167278984902574">Boolean
Node Automata </a>(from whence ultimately came his "adjacent
possible"?) were a bit more apt in not imposing the a-priori
structure that CA do.<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 2/4/22 8:59 AM, glen wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:81bea05d-4191-4f7d-9f6a-325f9a173b32@gmail.com">Exactly.
While I maintain hope that EricS will not think my question about
CliFi and the possibility of progressive life without freezing out
prior forms is simply the affections of a hopelessly ignorant,
albeit hopefully lovable dog, I can't help but reject the idea
that it's anthropocentric. And you're spot on in calling back to
the hegemony of *consistency* in such conversations. I think that
hegemony is inappropriate. Completeness is the more important
factor in, at least, fantasy. The more sedate, linear, SciFi you
(or Gould) identify as changing 1 thing and iterating the
consequences does seem focused on consistency. But I'm reminded of
Deutsch's "hard to vary" criterion for a good scientific theory.
The impetus there is an upper bound to Twitch, I think. How big
can we puff up the cone of possibilities so that it covers the
most interesting "adjacent possible"? Or, perhaps the question
would be what types of metrics can we define such that "adjacent"
is maximized? A radius of 1 in some metrics may be larger than a
radius of 1 in other metrics. And Twitch is the generative
impulse, the (pseudo)RNG that takes us from here to there.
Coverage is more important than consistency in fantasy.
<br>
<br>
On 2/4/22 07:44, Steve Smith wrote:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">I like the refinement you are gesturing at
here, if I'm following. I think that is what Zelazny did with
his Amber stuff and the ideation of this whole (infinite?)
milieu of parallel worlds being held in the tension of Logos
and Chaos.
<br>
<br>
I haven't read any of this work in decades so I expect my
understanding of all that would be different today, but at the
time I think I held that as the spectrum/gradient of entropy
between the low-information of perfect order and low information
of random order with "the interesting stuff" happening somewhere
in between. The specific quantization of coherent "worlds"
that individuals can participate in more or less in the way *we*
experience our world (or think we do?) is fascinating to me.
There is a variant of the anthropic principle at-work here
perhaps?
<br>
<br>
What you say about alternate logics is more obvious in it's
coherent quantization... and the world of whack-a-doodle
"alternative facts" is obviously seductive to those who indulge
in it, but the requirement of internal consistency seems to be
what yields quantization or at least concentrations of clusters
of factoids (like virtual particles?)?
<br>
<br>
<br>
On 2/4/22 8:03 AM, glen wrote:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">I think one of the reasons I *want* to
believe in parallel worlds and a fully embellished conception
of counterfactuals is *because* of my preference for stories
with such variation in what can be tweaked and then iterated
forward to watch the consequences. It's also why I'm
gobsmacked by alternative logics, despite my incompetence
therein. What we call "absurd" almost never really feels
absurd to me. It's fine! Just play along.
<br>
<br>
On 2/3/22 13:15, Steve Smith wrote:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">Stephen C Gould, the difference
between SF and Fantasy is that in SF, one singular known
fact is changed (faster than light travel, time travel,
wormhole, infinite cheap energy, etc.) and everything else
ensues from that, while in Fantasy, *everything* is up for
grabs (e.g. Magic) and everything ensues from that!
<br>
<br>
Zelazny's Amber-schtick seems to follow *somewhat* from that
idea... in some sense, it seems as if everything Magical he
invoked was somehow a natural consequence of the schmear of
physical laws across the schmear of parallel worlds
suspended between the antipodes of Logos and Chaos (my
interpretation of his deal)...
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<br>
<br>
</blockquote>
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