Hmmm so do I want to be 'that guy'? Ok sure, it's not like I can rest when _someone is wrong on the internet_
The Book of The New Sun (https://www.goodreads.com/series/41474-the-book-of-the-new-sun) is a *TETRALOGY* (plus a coda The Urth of the New Sun), so 5 books total, not a trilogy. It looks like the amazon link you have collected the first set of 4 books into two volumes each (Shadow and Claw along Sword and the Citadel) which is also how I read them back in my youth, so an understandable error to make.
But worth correcting because that's how the author viewed it, and Wolfe is one of my favorites. If you'd like more from him, I enjoyed this essay on writing multi-volume works collected by Gwern: https://gwern.net/doc/culture/2007-wolfe
Also I'd never read The City and The Stars but sounds fascinating, thanks for the rec!
I think you (Razib) once wrote that the Golden Age of Science Fiction is 13. I read a lot of sci-fi when I was a teenager, and even in college. I meet Frank Herbert back then. I thought he was daft. I had read Dune and found it turgid. I could never get into the successor books and lost interest in the genre long ago.
There is a lot of the old 1940s and 50s Sci-Fi that is so politically incorrect that it would never be published these days. For instance, E.E. "Doc" Smith and his Lensmen series was pretty openly white supremacist.
OTOH: I am still charmed by Alfred Bester's "The Stars My Destination". The primitive tribe that calls themselves: "The Scientific People" is just too perfect a send up of all the "In This House We Believe In Science" leftists 60 years before the fact.
I could not make my way through God Emperor of Dune although I tried.
I read Foundation Series when I was in high school. I think it had some influence on me becoming an economist (like Krugman!). I read it to my children when they were young and found I didn't like it as much since I thought all the characters were thinly drawn. I now much prefer Orson Scott Card's scifi. Much deeper.
As to professor's leaving Florida universities, I think the Elon response is appropriate. I know a number of people who left or were forced out of academics because of politics. I think it would be easy to recruit a very good faculty from researchers who are against the current orthodoxies.
I read Foundation also. I wanted to go into economics, but, alas my math chops couldn't hack it. I became a history major. I eventually read Gibbon. In my my estimation, the single greatest prose non-fiction work in the English Language. Sadly, it is disappearing from view because today's children are far too ADD to be able to absorb his prose. But, Gibbon did not propound a system, he told the story of humanity from the time of the Antonines to the Fall of Constantinople. It is the opposite of Asimov's scientism. There is not, nor, do I believe there will ever be a science of history.
I like the Foundation series the first time I read it, but it doesn't stand up to re-reading, the holes in the reasoning are too gaping. Asimov writes as if it is possible to make something happen by coming up with a clever argument that it should happen, and his bar for "clever" isn't all that high.
The most obvious hole is that Hari Seldon's whole concept of psycho-history assumes there cannot possibly be an individual with anywhere near the significance of Hari Seldon.
It's interesting, especially for you to post about Dune as a warning against AI. Because in Dune, the battle against AI was won by the humans, and super intelligence came not as a result of machines but through a millienia long eugenics program lol
Fair enough, they (humans) did restrict production of "thinking" machines after the Butlerian jihad. So in an alternative timeline, maybe the AI machines could have achieved God like intelligence. But hey, in the real timeline, we (humans) did the good old fashion way (eugenics), so ha, take that AGI!
IIRC, there were hints in Heretics of Dune that the Honored Matres were fleeing (back into the old empire) from AI that had arisen out in the Scattering.*
So the book is not shut on human vs AI intelligence!
*The son's books made this explicit later, but those books are bad, so I try not recall them in detail.
yeah, brian herbert's books i'm not sure to trust. he claims he worked off notes...but i think he just kind of made shit up. but in god emperor it's explicit that leto ii blocked the spread of ixian hunter-seekers cuz he knew they would expand across the universe... and leto ii has dreams of humans being hunted by machines
Razib, I see on Goodreads that you're currently reading 'Aryans: The Search for a People, a Place and a Myth' by Charles Allen. I'm guessing you will probably write a review sometime after you finish. Until then, can you say if it's worth reading?
"How to unleash a trailer home boom - Eliminate the rules that deter small factory-building houses. ... we need more housing. We need to supplement and replace artisanal construction with mass production."
I agree that the housing market has reached a profoundly dysfunctional equilibrium. The key figure is that the median house now costs about 5 or 6 times the median household income. Once upon a time the ratio was 2 or 3. But, public policy in this space is so profoundly dysfunctional that it is hard to say what is the best lever to move the equilibrium back to something more reasonable.
Housing policy has been marked by a remarkable tendency to do two things at once: subsidize demand and restrict supply. The major tools for tendency one have been the manipulation of financial markets to give purchasers far better financing terms than would be available to them with out those interventions. The 30 year fixed rate mortgage is an incredible gift to buyers. So are tax deductions for interest payments and real estate taxes.
At the same time zoning, permitting, environmental rules severely constrain the supply of lots. So do building codes. But, I am inclined to think that they are the smallest problem. Whatever it is, there is an incredible incentive for existing homeowners to fight allowing development. The problem is that the legal movements of the last generation, particularly the environmental laws have been sand in the gears of development.
Existing homeowners think they are making themselves rich, but housing is not a source of capital income until you sell it and move some place cheaper and smaller, particularly, the grave.
In Japan, they do lots of cheap fast construction:
"The rapid economic depreciation at an early stage of building life among Japanese detached houses" by Masatomo Suzuki and Yasushi Asami in Habitat International
Permitting nightmares in L.A.: "California Is Desperate for Affordable Housing But Can’t Stop Getting in Its Own Way: In Los Angeles, 49 units are taking 17 years to build, facing nearly every hurdle that state laws allow" By Will Parker and Christine Mai-Duc on Dec. 12, 2023 https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/housing-affordable-building-real-estate-db1d696e
So thrilled to see my favorite author and series, Gene Wolfe and _The Book of the New Sun_ get a mention here. However, it's actually a four-part series with the final volume being _The Citadel of the Autarch_, and a fifth volume exists as a coda: _Urth of the New Sun_.
*real timeline, as in, the actual Dune timeline. And I think that is an point. Because he is the only sci-fi writer I know of that, writes from the perspective of the humans actually winning a war against AI, when they reach the level of parity with human intelligence and have developed into a threat against us. The fact that the humans actually won the war means that in the end, the superior intelligence was actually still the organic intelligence
"A genetic history of the Balkans from Roman frontier to Slavic migrations."
I was really intrigued when I read the following in the highlights on p.1.:
"Genetic proof that migrants identified as Goths were ethnically diverse confederations"
But the text doesn't really follow up on that one.
Hmmm so do I want to be 'that guy'? Ok sure, it's not like I can rest when _someone is wrong on the internet_
The Book of The New Sun (https://www.goodreads.com/series/41474-the-book-of-the-new-sun) is a *TETRALOGY* (plus a coda The Urth of the New Sun), so 5 books total, not a trilogy. It looks like the amazon link you have collected the first set of 4 books into two volumes each (Shadow and Claw along Sword and the Citadel) which is also how I read them back in my youth, so an understandable error to make.
But worth correcting because that's how the author viewed it, and Wolfe is one of my favorites. If you'd like more from him, I enjoyed this essay on writing multi-volume works collected by Gwern: https://gwern.net/doc/culture/2007-wolfe
Also I'd never read The City and The Stars but sounds fascinating, thanks for the rec!
OMG lol. thanks. i actually read all those books twice in my teens (ok, i gave up the first time)
Same! But recently went back for a re-read, they hold up! 😁
I think you (Razib) once wrote that the Golden Age of Science Fiction is 13. I read a lot of sci-fi when I was a teenager, and even in college. I meet Frank Herbert back then. I thought he was daft. I had read Dune and found it turgid. I could never get into the successor books and lost interest in the genre long ago.
There is a lot of the old 1940s and 50s Sci-Fi that is so politically incorrect that it would never be published these days. For instance, E.E. "Doc" Smith and his Lensmen series was pretty openly white supremacist.
OTOH: I am still charmed by Alfred Bester's "The Stars My Destination". The primitive tribe that calls themselves: "The Scientific People" is just too perfect a send up of all the "In This House We Believe In Science" leftists 60 years before the fact.
I could not make my way through God Emperor of Dune although I tried.
I read Foundation Series when I was in high school. I think it had some influence on me becoming an economist (like Krugman!). I read it to my children when they were young and found I didn't like it as much since I thought all the characters were thinly drawn. I now much prefer Orson Scott Card's scifi. Much deeper.
As to professor's leaving Florida universities, I think the Elon response is appropriate. I know a number of people who left or were forced out of academics because of politics. I think it would be easy to recruit a very good faculty from researchers who are against the current orthodoxies.
I read Foundation also. I wanted to go into economics, but, alas my math chops couldn't hack it. I became a history major. I eventually read Gibbon. In my my estimation, the single greatest prose non-fiction work in the English Language. Sadly, it is disappearing from view because today's children are far too ADD to be able to absorb his prose. But, Gibbon did not propound a system, he told the story of humanity from the time of the Antonines to the Fall of Constantinople. It is the opposite of Asimov's scientism. There is not, nor, do I believe there will ever be a science of history.
I like the Foundation series the first time I read it, but it doesn't stand up to re-reading, the holes in the reasoning are too gaping. Asimov writes as if it is possible to make something happen by coming up with a clever argument that it should happen, and his bar for "clever" isn't all that high.
The most obvious hole is that Hari Seldon's whole concept of psycho-history assumes there cannot possibly be an individual with anywhere near the significance of Hari Seldon.
It's interesting, especially for you to post about Dune as a warning against AI. Because in Dune, the battle against AI was won by the humans, and super intelligence came not as a result of machines but through a millienia long eugenics program lol
there was no final victory. it's outlined in the later books of frank herbert...there is always the specter of machines going out of control
Fair enough, they (humans) did restrict production of "thinking" machines after the Butlerian jihad. So in an alternative timeline, maybe the AI machines could have achieved God like intelligence. But hey, in the real timeline, we (humans) did the good old fashion way (eugenics), so ha, take that AGI!
IIRC, there were hints in Heretics of Dune that the Honored Matres were fleeing (back into the old empire) from AI that had arisen out in the Scattering.*
So the book is not shut on human vs AI intelligence!
*The son's books made this explicit later, but those books are bad, so I try not recall them in detail.
yeah, brian herbert's books i'm not sure to trust. he claims he worked off notes...but i think he just kind of made shit up. but in god emperor it's explicit that leto ii blocked the spread of ixian hunter-seekers cuz he knew they would expand across the universe... and leto ii has dreams of humans being hunted by machines
The dry.io links come up blank. I am dropping my subscription in part due to the difficulty of finding articles from your archive.
Razib, I see on Goodreads that you're currently reading 'Aryans: The Search for a People, a Place and a Myth' by Charles Allen. I'm guessing you will probably write a review sometime after you finish. Until then, can you say if it's worth reading?
"How to unleash a trailer home boom - Eliminate the rules that deter small factory-building houses. ... we need more housing. We need to supplement and replace artisanal construction with mass production."
I agree that the housing market has reached a profoundly dysfunctional equilibrium. The key figure is that the median house now costs about 5 or 6 times the median household income. Once upon a time the ratio was 2 or 3. But, public policy in this space is so profoundly dysfunctional that it is hard to say what is the best lever to move the equilibrium back to something more reasonable.
Housing policy has been marked by a remarkable tendency to do two things at once: subsidize demand and restrict supply. The major tools for tendency one have been the manipulation of financial markets to give purchasers far better financing terms than would be available to them with out those interventions. The 30 year fixed rate mortgage is an incredible gift to buyers. So are tax deductions for interest payments and real estate taxes.
At the same time zoning, permitting, environmental rules severely constrain the supply of lots. So do building codes. But, I am inclined to think that they are the smallest problem. Whatever it is, there is an incredible incentive for existing homeowners to fight allowing development. The problem is that the legal movements of the last generation, particularly the environmental laws have been sand in the gears of development.
Existing homeowners think they are making themselves rich, but housing is not a source of capital income until you sell it and move some place cheaper and smaller, particularly, the grave.
In Japan, they do lots of cheap fast construction:
https://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-are-japanese-homes-disposable/
"Raze, rebuild, repeat: why Japan knocks down its houses after 30 years" by Nate Berg in Midorigaoka on Thu 16 Nov 2017 https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/nov/16/japan-reusable-housing-revolution
"The Economics Behind Japan’s Obsession With Housing: Architects in Japan get away with a lot. Here’s why home owners don’t mind living in houses without windows." By: Alastair Townsend https://metropolismag.com/projects/the-economics-behind-japans-obsession-with-housing/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_in_Japan
"The rapid economic depreciation at an early stage of building life among Japanese detached houses" by Masatomo Suzuki and Yasushi Asami in Habitat International
Volume 126, August 2022 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0197397522000972
But:
Permitting nightmares in L.A.: "California Is Desperate for Affordable Housing But Can’t Stop Getting in Its Own Way: In Los Angeles, 49 units are taking 17 years to build, facing nearly every hurdle that state laws allow" By Will Parker and Christine Mai-Duc on Dec. 12, 2023 https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/housing-affordable-building-real-estate-db1d696e
So thrilled to see my favorite author and series, Gene Wolfe and _The Book of the New Sun_ get a mention here. However, it's actually a four-part series with the final volume being _The Citadel of the Autarch_, and a fifth volume exists as a coda: _Urth of the New Sun_.
Sorry, I saw someone else already hopped on this small error! LOL
*real timeline, as in, the actual Dune timeline. And I think that is an point. Because he is the only sci-fi writer I know of that, writes from the perspective of the humans actually winning a war against AI, when they reach the level of parity with human intelligence and have developed into a threat against us. The fact that the humans actually won the war means that in the end, the superior intelligence was actually still the organic intelligence