None of these people ever seem to have heard of spandrels. Some stuff
is just a byproduct of other things that are adaptive, or just noise
that persists because it doesn’t stop you from reproducing. If you
accept this, then you don’t reason yourself into nonsense such as
“People [primarily] talk to signal to others their material wealth,
knowledge, and fitness.” Which may nonetheless be true in the author’s
social context, of course.
They don't think about those because Gould was a relaxed agnostic instead of an aggro atheist, so they hated him during formative teen years. There's an alternate universe where Richard Dawkins was live and let live and Gould was an aggro atheist, and in that universe they won't shut up about spandrels.
Not much has aged well from Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon.
But there’s a line about the type of nerd who gets offended whenever
someone speaks to them in declarative sentences, because it implies that
they didn’t already know what was being said.
Not a month goes by that I don’t think about that.
Stephenson's biggest issues are/were:
1) techno-libertarian-optimist mindset that fit in really well in the mid-90s but expired in 2008;
2) a greater interest in pop-science summaries of social trends than in human beings, which makes it hard to write a novel about human beings.
Both are on full display in *Cryptonomicon*. It's essentially "information wants to be free" as an adventure novel. But your standard adventure novel needs heroes and villains. Stephenson drops two villains in at the end - minor characters who surfaced in other characters' complex backstories, but hadn't otherwise been interfering with the protagonists prior to that point - because he realizes the book has to end with a Big! Explosive! Climax! even if the synthesis of competing social trends usually doesn't.
> nothing whatsoever happens at the end iirc?
Didn't the nerds pour a bunch of napalm down a mine and \~perfectly calculate\~ when and where to blast a hole so that the molten gold pours into their truck or whatever?
There also is an important third reason to talk, that is to tell people that this is a fast food establishment.
None of these people ever seem to have heard of spandrels. Some stuff is just a byproduct of other things that are adaptive, or just noise that persists because it doesn’t stop you from reproducing. If you accept this, then you don’t reason yourself into nonsense such as “People [primarily] talk to signal to others their material wealth, knowledge, and fitness.” Which may nonetheless be true in the author’s social context, of course.
Not much has aged well from Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon. But there’s a line about the type of nerd who gets offended whenever someone speaks to them in declarative sentences, because it implies that they didn’t already know what was being said.
Not a month goes by that I don’t think about that.
I wonder how long before someone brings up the hypothesis that some people actually like socially connecting and getting to know other people.
This is just sad. Goddamn.
It is earnestly astounding how tedious these people can be.
Evolutionarily desirable traits, such as knowing quantum mechanics!
People only open their mouths speak to each other about insufferable they are in rational-world.
Signaling to yourself like https://youtu.be/l8D7PmjV4pU
LessWrong? more like MoreWrong, amirite fellas?
seriously though I’ve always found this site insufferable. The last thing naive realists need is an echo chamber