[FRIAM] Double Master Function (was Re: bad covid story)

[glen]

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.

On 2/4/22 07:44, Steve Smith wrote:
> 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.
> 
> 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?
> 
> 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?)?
> 
> 
> On 2/4/22 8:03 AM, glen wrote:
>> 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.
>>
>> On 2/3/22 13:15, Steve Smith wrote:
>>> 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!
>>>
>>> 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)...
>>


-- 
glen
When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.