[HN Gopher] QNTM on memes, anti-memes, and knowledge that doesn'...
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QNTM on memes, anti-memes, and knowledge that doesn't want to be
shared
Author : ubac
Score : 108 points
Date : 2021-10-06 15:20 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thebrowser.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (thebrowser.com)
| ZephyrP wrote:
| In addition to their fiction, qntm is a sharp programmer;
| greenery [1], a tasteful python library for manipulating regular
| expressions written by them, is _also_ accompanied by high-
| quality writing on related topics [2] [3] [4] [5].
|
| [1] https://github.com/qntm/greenery
|
| [2] https://qntm.org/plants
|
| [3] https://qntm.org/lego
|
| [4] https://qntm.org/greenery
|
| [5] https://qntm.org/fsm
| wyager wrote:
| Qntm has some great long-form sci-fi novels. _Ra_ in particular
| was excellent.
| twicetwice wrote:
| _Ra_ is absolutely phenomenal, so good that when I finished it
| I sent qntm an effusive email thanking him for writing it (to
| which he sent a kind and thoughtful response), the first time I
| 've done that in a long time. _Fine Structure_ is excellent as
| well.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| I also greatly enjoyed reading it online - so much so that when
| they were published in harcover a few months ago, I got my own
| copy!
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Ra-qntm/dp/B096TRWRWX
|
| It now occupies an increasingly crowded place of pride on the
| face-height row of my main bookshelf, in a way that feels
| remarkably different from my favorite fiction bookmarks folder.
| Verdex wrote:
| Same. I read Ra, Fine structure, and no antimemetic division
| all online. Then as soon as I realized that there exists a
| published version, I bought all three.
|
| Most online fiction I bump into is in desperate need of an
| editor. The qntm books are actually pretty close to on par
| with a professionally edited book. And the concepts are not
| something that I normally find elsewhere.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| This article asks:
|
| > What information would you intrinsically not want anyone else
| to find out about?
|
| And then injects a "subscribe" nag that says:
|
| > my email address is...
|
| I thought this juxtaposition was funny.
| anandoza wrote:
| Ah, maybe it's been changed, but now it's more clearly
| intentional:
|
| > A piece of information you may or may not want us to find
| about is your email address....
|
| > [email address box] Subscribe Free
| [deleted]
| k__ wrote:
| There is no antimemetics divison needs a TV show.
|
| Pretty awesome ideas.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Maybe not an entire TV show, but it could make a good episode
| of a series like Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits, if it
| didn't happen already.
|
| Like a lot of SCP material, really.
| k__ wrote:
| A mini series at least, I think.
|
| The end of death would probably make for a good movie.
| sidpatil wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torchwood:_Miracle_Day
| WorkLobster wrote:
| Someone made a fantastic fan "movie" poster a while ago that's
| stuck in my head ever since:
|
| https://existentialterror.tumblr.com/post/611166753441169408...
| EamonnMR wrote:
| Antimemetics division is a fun book, but I think you need to go
| in with some familiarity with the tropes of SCP because it
| definitely leans on them.
| saeranv wrote:
| I actually have no idea what SCP is and I loved the
| Antimemetics division.
| inasio wrote:
| Not necessarily, I went in cold and it blew me away. Need to
| remember to check out his other books...
| twicetwice wrote:
| I highly recommend _Ra_ , it's phenomenal.
| bsedlm wrote:
| for some reason, this reminds me of this question that occured to
| me. How could we design some sort of error correction/encryption
| algorithm which makes the information impossible to encrypt.
|
| If we consider error correction to be the capacity for a message
| to resist errors, and encryption as the design of reversible
| error for any possible message (to add the error is to encrypt
| and to remove it is to decrypt).
|
| Then, how can we make an error correction scheme so good that a
| message encoded with it can be error corrected back into the
| original regardless of how the encoded message is encrypted?
| drdeca wrote:
| At least with classical information, I'm this is impossible.
|
| Classical information can be described with a sequence of bits.
| If you have a long enough shared random sequence of bits, you
| can always use that as a one-time-pad, and encrypt it that way.
|
| For quantum information, I'm fairly sure that a quantum
| variation of the one-time-pad still works (where the pad
| consists of entangled pairs of qubits (the two parties each
| hold one qubit of each pair) instead of just shared random
| bits), and so it is, I think, also impossible.
|
| (And even if it was possible-but-only-for-quantum-information,
| I think the no-cloning theorem would still render it pointless,
| as the only thing preventing it from being encrypted would
| accomplish, would be allowing someone to successfully intercept
| a message that was being sent, instead of just causing the
| message to be lost)
|
| _____
|
| Maybe the idea you are really looking for isn't "prevent it
| from being encrypted", but instead, "make any 'simple'
| reversible transformation of it, have parts that hint at a way
| to decode it / leave it still decodeable by some algorithm" ?
|
| where, I guess "simple" means something along the lines of,
| where the transformation can be described with much less
| information than the message to be sent?
|
| This, might(?) be possible?
|
| Ok, suppose the transformation is done by a deterministic
| finite state transducer, and specifically one which is
| invertible. (i.e. one T s.t. there exists a transducer S s.t.
| their composition gives the identity relationship over strings
| on the alphabet) .
|
| Then, uh,
|
| I guess you could like, take many copies of the message but
| transformed by different such transducers, and concatenate them
| together, except, accounting for the possibility of influence
| from the previous copies on the current copy.
|
| (accounting for this possibility by considering, given a
| transducer T and a string s1, constructing a transducer T' s.t.
| for any s2 and s3, ((s1 s2 [T] s3) iff (s2 [T'] s3)), or...
| something like that.)
|
| I think if the size of the possible adversary transducers you
| are dealing with is small compared to the messages you are
| sending, or rather, if you are allowed to encode your messages
| in ways that make them really gargantuan and much larger than
| could ever be practical, then, I think this could be done ?
|
| edit: On the other hand, if you don't restrict the adversary to
| small(relative to your message) reversible finite state
| transducers, but instead, say, turing machines which have their
| complexity (either kolmogorov complexity or levin complexity or
| something) much smaller than that of the message you want to
| send, and where these compute an transformation with a
| computable inverse which is provably an inverse, uh, well, that
| makes the problem harder, but,
|
| well, I guess if one can enumerate through all such turing
| machines (of which there will be finitely many, due to the
| bound on the complexity), and find the inverse of each, and
| apply each to the output of the machine,
|
| uh, well, one of these will produce the right output of course,
| but how can one go about determining which one it is?
|
| If you have an oracle for complexity...
|
| Ok, maybe it would be better to abstract more.
|
| The adversary, Chuck, has a large and fairly general, but
| finite, set of invertible maps from strings to strings, and
| they will choose one map h from this set.
|
| Alice and Bob also know this set, but not which map they chose.
|
| Alice and Bob need to agree on a pair of functions f, g from
| strings to strings, with the goal that the composition f ; h ;
| g is the identity function.
|
| If Alice and Bob have no restrictions on what functions they
| can use, then, I think there is a solution.
|
| The set of strings can be put in one to one correspondence with
| the natural numbers.
|
| What Alice and Bob need to do is find an infinite set of
| strings such that no two pairs of (transformation potentially
| chosen by Chuck, potential input to the transformation)
| produces the same output.
|
| For any input, there are only finitely many outputs that these
| transformations could give. Furthermore, because each of the
| transformations are invertible, for each of the outputs, each
| of the transformations produces that output for at most one
| input, and therefore there are only finitely many inputs such
| that some map in the set produces that output. So, for each
| input, there are only finitely many other inputs with which it
| could be confused.
|
| So, a sequence of these strings can be constructed as follows:
| start with the 0th possible string (under the chosen mapping).
| This will be used to encode 0.
|
| Then, repeat the following:
|
| If one has encodings for all natural numbers up to n, take the
| first string which cannot be confused with any of the strings
| one has already chosen to encode a number. This will be the
| encoding for n+1 .
|
| This works.
|
| (to decode, just find the only codeword which could be
| transformed into that by one of the maps)
|
| Perhaps this could be extended to allow Chuck to have a
| potentially infinite set of maps, but under the restriction
| that there is an order on these maps and which maps he is
| allowed to use is only the ones before a certain point in this
| order depending on the size of the input he is sent? Or,
| alternatively, some limitation how how quickly the maps can
| increase the size (or complexity?) of the string?
| bsedlm wrote:
| >Maybe the idea you are really looking for isn't "prevent it
| from being encrypted", but instead, "make any 'simple'
| reversible transformation of it, have parts that hint at a
| way to decode it / leave it still decodeable by some
| algorithm" ?
|
| yes, but in such a way that the original message is
| recoverable even if it gets encrypted.
|
| I should have said, that I'm thinking classically and that
| I'm thinking about key-based encryption, i.e. no one-time
| pads and the key has to be smaller than the message.
|
| > if you are allowed to encode your messages in ways that
| make them really gargantuan and much larger than could ever
| be practical, then, I think this could be done ?
|
| Yea, I think this may be unavodiable in any way this is done.
| The encoded message will be much bigger than the plain text.
| Which also makes it reasonable to expect this to work only
| against key-based cyphers.
|
| I don't undesrtand why you compare the complexity of the
| message and the complexity of the machines doing the
| cyphering (either en- or de-cryption), but regardless, thanks
| for the response.
| a1369209993 wrote:
| > can we make an error correction scheme so good that a message
| encoded with it can be error corrected back into the original
| regardless of how the encoded message is encrypted?
|
| No. Preventing this is called IND-CPA (indistiguishability
| under chosen plaintext attack) security and is basically table
| stakes for any modern symmetric encryption algorithm.
|
| In fact this is even weaker than IND-CPA, since in IND-CPA the
| attacker can first observe arbitrarily many _other_ plaintexts
| and use the resulting information to choose two (non-yet-seen)
| plaintexts _specific to the particular encryption algorithm and
| key_ to try to distinguish, _and_ they don 't have to be _sure_
| which is which, only to do significantly better than chance.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| This sounds like the irresistible force paradox, in that it is
| only a paradox if one allows for arbitrary definitions of error
| correction or encryption.
| jerf wrote:
| You'd need to cleverly narrow down the definition of
| "encrypted" you're operating under. The broad definition allows
| me to take your message and essentially turn it into _any_
| sequence of bits of sufficient length, and there 's no way for
| you to then layer any further restrictions on top of that
| sequence because of the near-arbitrary power I have in
| selecting my encryption scheme. You'd need to reduce that power
| in some way to then create even a subset of messages that could
| survive the encryption.
|
| Such a result would probably be of no practical use but it
| could be interesting in a recreational mathematics sort of way.
| bsedlm wrote:
| > You'd need to cleverly narrow down the definition of
| "encrypted" you're operating under.
|
| absolutely.
|
| I suppose I should have explained that I'm thinking of
| "practical key-based symmetric(?) encryption", i.e. ecryption
| which hinges on a key which gets "expanded" by some clever
| (and aribtrary) algorithm into enough bits for any message;
| and which (it goes without saying) can be decrypted back
| exactly given a key and an algorithm (the same ones or at
| least very similar ones if symmetric).
|
| I'm not knowledgeable enough in cryptography to easily
| consider the assymetric case; but I don't think symmatric-
| asymmetrica changes things that much.
| anyfoo wrote:
| Encryption does not "add", like error/noise, it translates. The
| signal-to-noise ratio stays the same.
|
| Another way do describe it is that error correction creates
| resistance against (effectively) some upper boundary of
| error/noise. It does that by essentially multiplying the signal
| so that (with a still constant error) it increases the
| effective SNR , as that is just signal divided by error. It
| cannot work if you have 100% noise and 0% signal (it's
| intuitive why, and 0 multiplied by x is still 0). A good
| encryption scheme however (pretty much any common one that
| isn't a toy) has the goal of making the signal look _entirely_
| random for anyone without the proper algorithm and secret to
| reverse. With an effectively 0 SNR to that observer, there is
| no signal to boost.
|
| Noise/error is random, if it wasn't it would be reversible and
| not need any error correction techniques that effectively
| reduce bandwidth. Encrypting, however, is not random at all, it
| is entirely deterministic, making it intentionally reversible.
| munificent wrote:
| I really enjoyed _There Is No Antimemetics Division_. It 's self
| published and is, as I understand it, a collection of the
| author's contributions to SCP [0]. Given that, my expectations
| about the quality of the writing were pretty low. But it way
| exceeded them and is some of the most engaging speculative
| fiction I've read in a long time.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCP_Foundation
| jedimastert wrote:
| For whatever reason, SCP is some of the best sci writing out
| there, especially the short stories outside of the (already
| incredible) entity wiki entries.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Well there are thousands of entries, bad ones being called
| frequently, and it has been going on for over a decade.
| There's bound to be some good stuff in there.
|
| I'd say that sturgeon's law still applies though.
| MivLives wrote:
| I think there's also something to be said for the
| canonization and building on more advanced concepts. For
| example anti memetics, or pataphysics, or even short hand
| like Scranton Reality Anchor, or telekill alloy. All these
| concepts are tools the an author can use without having to
| reinvent or explain which makes shorter fiction easier. Or
| they just can ignore them entirely if it's inconvenient to
| the plot. Every entry there stands on the shoulders of all
| the others.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Probably sturgeon's law is an upper-bound, but a small
| percentage of a very large number is still pretty big.
| Y_Y wrote:
| > Sturgeon's law (or Sturgeon's revelation) is an adage
| stating "ninety percent of everything is crap."
|
| Why doesn't the browser automate away the hassle of looking
| up this stuff. I can't remember everyone and their many
| laws!
| lmkg wrote:
| Side-note: My favorite Wikipedia page is the List of
| Eponymous Laws. It's a very eclectic collection of
| interesting topics to learn about, many of which are
| worth knowing.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_eponymous_laws
| Y_Y wrote:
| > Cole's Law: A salad of thinly sliced cabbage with a
| mayonnaise dressing
|
| I'm gladdened to see that not all the fun has been sucked
| out of Wikipedia yet. (Don't BJAODN this!)
| bduerst wrote:
| Anti-meme is one of the original SCP:
|
| https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-055
|
| Also written by qntm!
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Five to the power of five is 3,125. _Ahem_.
| teraflop wrote:
| This line from the interview jumped out at me:
|
| > QNTM: Do it. If it's your first time, try a second time as
| well. Your first attempt might be okay or it might not be so
| okay, but it's something you can get better at over time. You
| can practice, you can get good.
|
| because it's reflected very clearly in qntm's own writing. He's
| been publishing his fiction online for close to two decades,
| and I've been following his website for almost as long. He's
| always been a talented and imaginative writer, but the
| _craftsmanship_ of his writing has been continuously getting
| better and better.
|
| https://qntm.org/fiction
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Link to the SCP hub: https://scp-
| wiki.wikidot.com/antimemetics-division-hub
|
| And speaking carefully to avoid spoilers, I'd say my primary
| delight in the QNTM et al. AMD stories is how they lean into
| the universe to subvert expectations. They _never_ turn out
| how you expect.
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| I really loved _Ra_ [1], another of his books. It starts with
| "Magic is real in the modern world, and a subject of
| engineering", and it gets much, _much_ crazier from there. It
| 's my favorite of his books/stories.
|
| What I particularly liked about it is that it followed this
| geek's impulse of "yeah but why/how?" and answered it. Then
| answered the question after that. And after _that_. It was an
| exponentially wild ride.
|
| It's not a perfect book. The characters are, honestly, kind of
| weak in an overpowered kind of way; it's more an idea-driven
| book than plot- or character-driven.
|
| But I think the HN crowd would really like it, and it deserves
| wider recognition!
|
| [1] https://qntm.org/ra
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| > _kind of weak in an overpowered kind of way_
|
| I mean many of the characters have forgettable personalities,
| and react to situations like they have superhuman
| intellect/foreknowledge.
| kevingadd wrote:
| It's hard to overstate how good qntm's work is, at least in
| this area. The metaphysical underpinnings and world-building
| are really well considered and the characterization is great.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It reminds me of what Baudrillard writes about "The Secret" in
| his book "On Seduction".
|
| For a "secret" to be significant there has to be some awareness
| that a "secret" exists. As Don Rumsfeld would put it, it is a
| "known unknown".
| aidenn0 wrote:
| One recent anti-meme is words that you are not allowed to say
| even to refer to the word. If you didn't know the word, the
| phrase "the N-word" is not very enlightening, but people have
| been censured and even fired for using that word just to refer to
| it as a word[1].
|
| In addition if you search for the actual word (not "n-word") on
| HN none of the articles are from the past year (there are two
| submissions from the past year, but the articles are from 1999
| and 1971. The submissions have a total of 11 upvotes.
|
| I recently ran into an article that used the phrase "the R-word"
| and I had to ask my teenage daughter which particular word that
| referred to. It's now very googleable, but at the time none of
| the top 5 pages on google indicated what the word might be.
|
| 1: One example: a white teacher at a meeting discussing standards
| for materials used in the classroom. One rule disallowed books
| with the n-word. The teacher said roughly: "So if there is a book
| about the black experience, written by a black author, I can't
| use it in my classroom because it has the word 'n*****' in it?"
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Recent???
|
| The tetragrammaton is thousands of years old.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetragrammaton
| willhinsa wrote:
| N, R, and F.
| dsr_ wrote:
| This is the proper place of a dictionary, and so:
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/N-word
|
| https://www.dictionary.com/browse/n-word
|
| https://www.thefreedictionary.com/n-word
|
| All tell you precisely what is meant.
|
| For some reason, school boards are terrible at the use-mention
| distinction.
| speedybird wrote:
| > _For some reason, school boards are terrible at the use-
| mention distinction._
|
| School boards are mostly comprised of average enough people,
| who are generally quite bad at this distinction. Although
| with school boards it's a bit worse because school board
| members can selectively choose not to recognize this
| distinction as a cudgel against their petty opponents (the
| lower the stakes, the nastier the fights...)
| exporectomy wrote:
| But I think most people know what those words are so somehow
| the idea is shared very well. Most taboos are probably like
| this - they're actually well known but talking about them and
| doing them is discouraged.
|
| I wonder about believing you're wrong about any specific
| knowledge you have. That's pretty hard. Others can try to
| communicate it to you but your brain tries to find ways to
| reject that information.
| Y_Y wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphemism#Euphemism_treadmill
|
| For what it's worth, this stuff is culturally relative. The
| r-word is apparently "retard", and not an unsayable slur within
| my cultural sphere, to the best of my limited knowledge.
| rovolo wrote:
| I'd like to disagree with the idea of a "treadmill" because
| it implies that changing language doesn't anything and leaves
| us where we started. The wikipedia entry mentions "moron",
| "imbecile", and "retard" as examples which started as medical
| diagnoses before becoming insults.
|
| It implies that the medical community moved away from these
| terms _because_ they became insults. However, these are all
| terms derived from IQ testing and the concept of "mental
| age". IQ has been de-emphasized as _the_ diagnostic criterion
| for a couple reasons: people with mental disabilities aren 't
| the same as younger people without mental disabilities; the
| focus should be on what sort of help people need rather than
| what they can't do.
|
| > In current medical diagnosis, IQ scores alone are not
| conclusive for a finding of intellectual disability. Recently
| adopted diagnostic standards place the major emphasis on the
| adaptive behavior of each individual, with IQ score just
| being one factor in diagnosis in addition to adaptive
| behavior scales, and no category of intellectual disability
| being defined primarily by IQ scores.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_classification#Classificati.
| ..
|
| As for the common use as an insult, you're right that its
| impact is culturally relative. To me, I would ask why you're
| using a term which used to be a medical diagnosis as an
| insult. The wiki section says kids are saying "what are you,
| 'special'?" in reference to "special needs". Does that mean
| it's bad to get that medical diagnosis? I'd side-eye someone
| who says "retard" as an insult because it's not just rude to
| the insultee.
| Y_Y wrote:
| Old terms will fall away one way or another, this is just
| an observation that popular neutral terms for negative
| things will be continually repurposed as perjoratives, and
| then fall away in their turn.
| rovolo wrote:
| > popular neutral terms for negative things
|
| Why is being medically "retarded" a negative thing?
| Should you be ashamed to be "retarded"?
|
| This is the same argument against using "gay" and
| "faggot" as insults. If you use them as insults, you're
| saying that it's bad to be gay.
| speedybird wrote:
| Fundamentally, impugning somebody's intelligence is an
| insult. All the side-eyeing and inventive euphemisms in the
| world won't change this.
| rovolo wrote:
| I agree that it's an insult. Some people's actions
| deserve to be insulted. I'm saying that you may be
| insulting other people who are not your target.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| > The r-word is apparently "retard", and not an unsayable
| slur within my cultural sphere, to the best of my limited
| knowledge.
|
| True of my cultural sphere as well, but it's considerably
| more shocking a word than "fuck" is to my teenage daughter.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| First time I read _There Is No Antimemetics Division_ I
| immediately read it again. Now I read it if I 'm waiting for a
| good book to show up. There's no other book that I can just read
| again and again and enjoy it.
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(page generated 2021-10-06 23:01 UTC)