Escape Artists
Escape Pod => Episode Comments => Topic started by: Swamp on July 30, 2010, 01:17:46 AM
-
EP251: Unexpected Outcomes (http://escapepod.org/2010/07/29/ep251-unexpected-outcomes/)
By Tim Pratt (http://www.timpratt.org/)
Read by Tom “Devo Spice” Rockwell of The Funny Music Project. (http://www.thefump.com/)
Originally published in: Interzone (http://ttapress.com/interzone/)
But the plane just stopped, and hung there, nose tipped at a slight angle, mere feet from the building.
And that’s when the figure — the one people call the Ambassador, or the Doctor, or the Outsider, or the Professor, or a hundred other names — appeared. Just a middle-aged man in a white lab coat, with steel-rimmed glasses and graying hair. His image filled the air above the jetliner, like the dome of the sky had been transformed into an IMAX movie screen.
He said, “People of Earth, I have a message for you.”
Rated PG for ennui and futility of life.
Show Notes:
Tim Pratt is serializing a Marla Mason novel, Broken Mirrors at his website. His first anthology is out this summer from Night Shade Books, Sympathy for the Devil.
Tom Rockwell’s work can be found at his personal music website, Devo Spice, The Funny Music Project, and his comedy troupe, Cirque du So What?
Incidentally, Tom Rockwell, myself, and many other Escape Artist writers and narrators will be at NASFiC next week, so check us out if you’re in the Raleigh, NC area!
Next week… Rescue in deep space. And guitar ballads.
(http://escapepod.org/wp-images/podcast-mini4.gif)
Listen to this week’s Escape Pod! (http://c3.libsyn.com/media/18601/EP251_UnexpectedOutcomes.mp3?nvb=20100730010708&nva=20100731011708&sid=2249c2f325b554f7942bf8be5b2bad91&t=0ecab1a2a11035e0185e5)
-
Not finished listening yet, but....
If they have enough information to build a perfect replica of the universe that results in 9/11 happening, how much can they learn from that replica about why it happened? It's all there in their initial conditions, right? I they were running millions of concurrent simulations, and they wanted to see which ones resulted in 9/11, that would makes sense, but that seems to be contradicted by the processing requirements.
-
Why assume the researchers are being honest about the purposes of the simulation? (Finish the story; you'll see.)
-
What a great little story full of snark and win. I'll be surprised if the story's jumping off point being 9-11 doesn't enrage a few people though.
It does make sense the the lab tech is lying; if weather takes up so much processing power, wouldn't turning off the rain (and the flooding that results from it) altogether save power? Wouldn't turning off aging save more power? Surely simulating the biological decay of six billion people would take up at least as much power as making it rain/snow/etc. The reasoning really doesn't make sense. In fact, my first thought when the true nature of their reality was revealed was "how much data could be gathered by observing this ultra-realistic world now that have told them they are fake?"
When the lab tech was explaining the situation to Tim and Heather I did not think of "The Matrix" (and for the exact reason that the lab tech gives), but of "The Thirteenth Floor" which was a much more similar situation.
Also, am I the only person who flashed on Doctor Who when Tim referred to the lab tech as "The Doctor" at the beginning?
-
Tim: Yeah, clearly I should wait to the end before commenting.
Excellent story. Though I'd love to see it tweaked to become Chapter One of a novel.
-
Another great story. And it had a kind of Groundhog Day feel to it for me. Like if there is nothing you can do to change things... change yourself. If you can't change the world, try.
-
I love it when I can spot flaws in a stories logic that turn out not to be flaws at all. Too many SF stories have worldbuilding groaners that I either have to wave off as the author's ignorance or even find a geeky way to make it work in my own mind (like in the matrix where they said they are using the humans as heating units, but clearly it would need to be as processors). But sometimes a story can make me groan at an implausibility, then later a character points out the same flaw - and I get a geeky thrill of vindication.
This story did that excellently, and was generally a great yarn in general.
Personally, I wonder how long any of them existed before 9/11. If the future scientists can create the past from initial conditions, well those conditions had to start somewhere. I'm guessing the simulation actually turned on the morning it was revealed they were a sim.
-
Awesome, loved this story; Was a unique angle on the simulation thing, and had an amusing twist in the characters behaviours.
-
Personally, I wonder how long any of them existed before 9/11. If the future scientists can create the past from initial conditions, well those conditions had to start somewhere. I'm guessing the simulation actually turned on the morning it was revealed they were a sim.
Yeah, that was what I was thinking.
-
Personally, I wonder how long any of them existed before 9/11. If the future scientists can create the past from initial conditions, well those conditions had to start somewhere. I'm guessing the simulation actually turned on the morning it was revealed they were a sim.
Yeah, that was what I was thinking.
Its something of an open question - and bare in mind, the researchers are likely lying, so you can assume they didn't really exist before that morning.
-
For a story that's starts out with 9/11, it was a really nice change of pace to get something in the never-before category of "chicken soup for the apocalyptic soul". Serious after all of heavy downer stuff coming down the feed lately, this was refreshing. And I did NOT like it better when it was Star Ocean: 'Til the end of Time.
The narrator really told the story well, but at times it sounded like he was checking his email while narrating, and like his chair needed oil. A little distracting, but he did such a good and lively job with the story that it is very forgivable.
2¢
-
Weirdly meta and vaguely mind-bending. Good times. :)
Also, am I the only person who flashed on Doctor Who when Tim referred to the lab tech as "The Doctor" at the beginning?
No, it was the first thing i thought of also. Which could potentially add a whole nother aspect to the tale - hehe.
-
When the lab tech was explaining the situation to Tim and Heather I did not think of "The Matrix" (and for the exact reason that the lab tech gives), but of "The Thirteenth Floor" which was a much more similar situation.
[aol]
Me, too!
[/aol]
-
I loved this story. It takes a wonderful, audacious setup and takes it in a direction that just gets more interesting.
What a great little story full of snark and win. I'll be surprised if the story's jumping off point being 9-11 doesn't enrage a few people though.
I'm wondering the same thing, and whether Tim Pratt's gotten any strong negative feedback about that, not least because I have a tendency to do similar stuff in my own (utterly unpublished) fiction.
-
I really liked this story. Right from the first sentence to the last. I'd love to hear more from this universe.
-
Great story, and the cherry on the top for me was the AYB reference in the concluding remarks.
-
Not a bad story at all, but it left me wanting more. Tim (the author, not the proto-author/protagonist) has set up a world in which a lot of things can happen and it seems a shame to leave it unexplored. I dig the John Barth angle, but I wonder if Tim's commitment to keeping Tim theoretically autobiographical might have stood in the way of some more decisive action on his part.
-
Is it fair to draw parallel to "Childhood's End" ?
-
Not finished listening yet, but....
If they have enough information to build a perfect replica of the universe that results in 9/11 happening, how much can they learn from that replica about why it happened? It's all there in their initial conditions, right? I they were running millions of concurrent simulations, and they wanted to see which ones resulted in 9/11, that would makes sense, but that seems to be contradicted by the processing requirements.
See also "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".
-
I liked the story, although the self-inclusion aspect (yes, I know, "Tim" and "Heather" were fictional characters because they are in a universe that doesn't really exist) turned me off quite a bit in the beginning. It always has. I didn't like the PP story about the author and the 12 words for that reason (forget the name of it). The story overcame that, however, although I was a little grumpy about how "Tim" wondered if he'd been a great author in reality. Maybe this story was written (or started) before the author reached that mark, but it felt a little too much for me and pulled me out of the story a bit.
A world where nobody poops? BLASPHEMY! Too few people admit it, but a good poop can really make your day. I mean, look how happy your dog is after HE does it.*
Anyway, the reading was extremely breathy, like there were dead spots removed and the breaths slammed into the front and back of each line of narration or dialogue. That was annoying. Though the reader did a good job differentiating the (admittedly) few characters without using too many "character voices".
* No, I didn't write that line just so Bill reads it in the feedback segment. I swear.
-
Wow, yet another case of "unsatisfying purely because I wanted more" syndrome ;D. Though unlike the last time I had that problem (Podcastle, Small Gods) I really do think this one stopped at entirely the right place. I many ways this story was a heartwarming ode to the power of the human spirit - albeit one with a really creepy existentially troubling adversity - and I'm basically a sucker for those. I do wish I knew more of how the bold rebels were going to succeed, and what they hoped to actually gain, and what actually happened to them. Could their plight and their brave response - Horton Hears a Who-like - win the sympathy of some pitiful lab tech who could then leak the project to the media? Could they force some response out of the scientists? What, other than the satisfaction of knowing they wouldn't be bowed or broken, did they really stand to gain?
Alas, I'll never know exactly. That's fiction for you.
-
Something kind of creepy occurred to me. No more babies were born, right? But what about the women who were pregnant? Does that mean they were pregnant FOREVER? After all, if rain and drought were permanent....
-
Something kind of creepy occurred to me. No more babies were born, right? But what about the women who were pregnant? Does that mean they were pregnant FOREVER? After all, if rain and drought were permanent....
My fiancée asked the same thing.
-
Something kind of creepy occurred to me. No more babies were born, right? But what about the women who were pregnant? Does that mean they were pregnant FOREVER? After all, if rain and drought were permanent....
My fiancée asked the same thing.
Maybe that's where a good portion of the 10% who committed suicide came from. <shudder>
-
Not only is this a great post-Apocalypse story, but also a great "subject behind glass" tale. I mean, how many of us haven't ever had that weird thought that their whole life is just some kind of unseen alien's laboratory maze to see if we can find the cheese or get shocked. Really? Just me??? Ohhhh-kaaaayyy (slinking away backward).
Seriously though, this is a great story, and I think the comment about this would be a great 1st chapter to a novel speak to what a tantalizing world Tim has introduced us to. Though I would hope / think that humanities persistence and ingenuity would eventually win out and turn the tables on the experimenters.
-
I did start to guess before he got to Dawson that the real experiment was probably what people did after being told they were simulations -- but in a well-told tale, I don't mind guessing where it's going, and this was indeed a well-told tale.
I'll admit the 9/11 opening made me twitch at first. Inglourious Basterds got me thinking about how we're nearly always ready to see alternate histories that make things worse, but there's odd limitations (partly time-based) on whether we're ready to see history made alternate in a fashion that averts horror. 9/11 is definitely too recent for me to enjoy a story in which the tragedies are somehow prevented; it feels like cheap wish-fulfillment. But my twitchiness went away as soon as the simulation was explained, because it didn't erase the real event.
Technical complaint: I don't know if it's a mike issue or what, but the exhale/inhale break between lines was VERY audible, and distracted me more and more as the reading went along. It got to the point where I was gritting my teeth through that in order to pay attention to (and enjoy) the story. Otherwise the reading was decent; it's just the noise that was driving me crazy.
-
It didn't even occur to me to think about this until others mentioned it, but I want to come out and say that the 9/11 mention didn't bug me in the least. I happened. It was a big deal. It's an even that's going to cast its shadow on everything we do and everything we write, probably for the rest of our lives ("us" being everyone in America who lived through it). I don't see anything wrong with bringing it up, using it in stories, and mining it for plot potential. I never have, even immediately afterwards, and I certainly don't now, almost a decade later. Honestly, the parallel seemed pretty apt to me: that was a moment that changed everything for us... and in the simulation, it was a moment that changed everything for them.
-
Not really a story comment, but I have to say this episode was Norm's best EP intro/outro yet.
-
Personally, I was a little underwhelmed. I had a hard time buying that the narrator and his buddy were the only people who were doing this, and I had a REALLY hard time believing that they'd managed to do anything other than exactly what was expected of them; that got a token mention right at the end of his would-be "Common Sense" pamphlet, but frankly, it's a much larger problem than that. I can't imagine that the future-folks thought that NO ONE in an entire simulated planet would figure out what was going on, especially since the Professor's initial explanation was really thin to start out with.
I was annoyed by the winking self-inserts, but I do have a pet peeve about authors writing main characters who are authors; it happens a LOT, and it's just kind of lazy. I know that this one was done in a self-aware way, but that doesn't wholly ameliorate the initial eye-rolling reaction.
I was more irked that the story seemed to be a lot more interested in telling me about its premise than in actually exploring the premise. I'd have liked to see the world rather than listen to a brief and distant summary-travelogue sandwiched between two monologues. There's a lot of potential meat here (witness the 4000-page "Otherland" series by Tad Williams, which addresses similar concepts) and it seemed to be almost purposely ignored in favor of simple (almost simplistic) explanations and a rather confusing and myopic call to arms.
I love Tim Pratt to pieces, most of the time, but this was just a flop for me on several levels. I feel like some story notes got given a quick skeletal plotline and shoved out the door before they could develop fully; a bit like reading Roger Zelazny's "The Force That Through the Circuit Drives the Current" and then the novella it eventually grew into, "Home is the Hangman." I think this concept needed to stew a bit longer and come back as a meatier tale.
-
Personally, I was a little underwhelmed. I had a hard time buying that the narrator and his buddy were the only people who were doing this, .
Your other comments are fair enough, and I agree with some of them, but this one strikes as an impression not verified by the text. If the world is, in fact, as fractured as described, then whether other people were doing this or not is not a known quantity to the author. I took away the impression that probably other people ARE doing it, we just don't know about them, because we don't have their pamphlet.
No, where it broke down for me (though I enjoyed it, on the whole) is in the utter, unexamined Amerocentricity. Because there's only a language barrier when the scientist talks to the hijackers, that barrier is unacknowledged when the characters are shortcutting to Kathmandu (or wherever). Handing them your English pamphlet, are you? And they're doing what with that, exactly?
-
[W]here it broke down for me (though I enjoyed it, on the whole) is in the utter, unexamined Amerocentricity.
You mean kind of like it is in our real world? :)
-
There are languages other than American??!!?
-
Personally, I was a little underwhelmed. I had a hard time buying that the narrator and his buddy were the only people who were doing this, .
Your other comments are fair enough, and I agree with some of them, but this one strikes as an impression not verified by the text.
Yeah, I know, but it doesn't even get *mentioned* elsewhere in the story that maybe someone else dug a hole. This may just be another artifact of the "too much world crammed into too little plot" problem. It feels almost perverse how much was ignored in favor of reading this pamphlet all the way through, particularly when the pamphlet itself isn't particularly insightful about the situation the story proposes.
-
I don't think it's necesary for it to be mentioned. Maybe it happened, yeah, but the story is being told through one person's point of view, so its reasonable only his part of the story be told.
-
The language barrier issue is a fair cop, and something I could have addressed pretty easily if I'd thought about it. (Though Dawson does speak a little Chinese! In real life, that is...)
Nobody has contacted me with any bad reactions to the 9/11 aspect, though several reviewers have hypothesized that people might react badly to it. I wasn't trying to trivialize the event at all. The story was inspired by the fact that my then girlfriend, now wife and I really did stay in bed that morning after our friend Sherman called, wondering what kind of event could possibly be on every channel at once, hypothesizing that it could be an assassination or an alien invasion... reality was so much worse.
For people who don't like the metafictional aspect... well, yeah, some people don't. And I considered fictionalizing it. But I felt it could have more impact if I grounded it more in my personal reality. Certainly it made it more emotionally powerful for me, while writing it. (And technically it's not exactly metafiction -- I mean, the narrator isn't *me*, he's a simulation of me running in the unimaginably distant future...)
-
* No, I didn't write that line just so Bill reads it in the feedback segment. I swear.
I will be reading just this bit in the feedback segment.
-
FWIW, the 9/11 scene early in the story put me in mind of Brian K. Vaughan's comic book Ex Machina (http://www.amazon.com/Ex-Machina-Vol-First-Hundred/dp/1401206123/ref=pd_sim_b_8), about the world's first and worst superhero, who comes out of retirement long enough to keep the second plane from hitting the second tower, thereby saving it and making himself a national hero and candidate for mayor of NYC. It's mostly a very good.
That's not at all to take away from what Tim did here - they're different stories that go in very different directions. But it's just to say that there are many stories trying to deal with 9/11 and it's effect on American culture (Fringe in television; Gibson's Pattern Recognition also comes to mind, albeit not at all an alternative history way.
Personally, I appreciate that, although I totally get why others may not.
-
The language barrier issue is a fair cop, and something I could have addressed pretty easily if I'd thought about it.
But what about the pregnant women?? Inquiring minds want to know!
-
I loved the whole experimental situation and the references to the Zimbardo and Milgram experiments.
I'm Milgram's daughter, and this story reminded me how when he died, sometimes those of us who knew him well would say that maybe that he wasn't really dead - that it was just another Milgram experiment so that our reactions could be observed. I"m sure if he were alive, I'd be sharing this story with him and discussing it with him.
-
Pregnant women: probably pregnant forever, because as horrible as that is, the alternatives are even more disturbing.
-
Pregnant women: probably pregnant forever, because as horrible as that is, the alternatives are even more disturbing.
Except, at that point they're probably basically carrying stillborn babies. And, we know that most body functions - including healing - must continue. A dude digging a hole would notice if his cuts and blisters never cleared up (and now we're wandering into Elantris... *shudder*). So, probably a doctor could just cut the baby out or induce labor.
-
Speaking as an avatar with a home in 'Pondorosa', Second Life, and clothing that isn't always where it should be when I make my entrance, I don't see what all the fuss is about. You get switched off, you migrate to another SIM. Simples! ;D
-
Hmmm, so if we can be sure that the mysterious overlords plan wasn't to simulate the events up to 11/09/01 (yah boo sucks to your American way of writing dates!) what was it, to see what happens to humans when faced by the removal of things that make the human experience human? The choices highlighted seem a bit random and a good scientist would surely work on the principle of ramping up the unfavourable factors ('... then Doctor God reappeared again and said that they had to turn the weather off this time because the processing required...')? This isn't a complaint by the way, I really enjoyed the story.
I'm not sure how it follows that the white space is outside the game and therefore all rules are off in it's use, the video game analogy isn't exact, when running along the ceiling in Mario, you're still in the world. I like to think that the overlords are letting quite a few humans find this space as part of whatever their scheme really is.
And to whoever it was that said they didn't like it when authors turn up in their own work, have you read 'VALIS'?
-
And to whoever it was that said they didn't like it when authors turn up in their own work, have you read 'VALIS'?
As I understand it, PKD really believed he was in contact with a Vast Active Living Intelligence System, and that novel was largely autobiographical (I'm sure he fabricated the bits about rock star Mother Goose, the VALIS movie, and the messiah kid Sophia -- but I'm not sure about his split-personality "Horselover Fat". Being mentally fucked up was an issue all his life.)
-
what was it, to see what happens to humans when faced by the removal of things that make the human experience human? The choices highlighted seem a bit random and a good scientist would surely work on the principle of ramping up the unfavourable factors
They're running *lots* of different simulations, and each one just changes one little factor...
This set of conditions is just the world *this particular* Tim Pratt is in...
-
+Good Story
++Great narration
+Good sound quality
++Great Intro/outro by Norm Sherman*
I liked the story very much, but i'd have liked a more substantive ending. i'm new to short-story science fiction, but i love everything of Tim Pratt that i've heard so far...
*Norm Sherman is always an interesting/funny/fun intro; i want some of whatever he is taking..
/= )
-
Yes please, more of this. "Mellow apocalypse". Heh.
-
An interesting premise, I liked the idea of the simulation of the real world with non-essential services shut down. It did bother me at the beginning how nonsensical the way they did this was--after all, if weather is hard to simulate, then microbes would be even more so, as well as aging. So I was happy when the story pointed this out and used it for justification of the experimenters lying.
This will come as a surprise, since I usually gush about Tim Pratt's stories at the slightest provocation, but overall I really hated this story. I'd easily peg him as my favorite short story author of all time because he comes up with such cool ideas which strike a chord in me with a consistency that no other author has managed.
The reasons this one really bugged me.
1. The 9/11 beginning. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that those people were saved in this universe. But using this sort of (fairly) recent tragedy as the basis of a short story tends to rub me the wrong way--like selling hot dogs by one of those signs that are often put up near fatal drunk driving accidents. I wouldn't say I was "outraged" by this, more like "peeved". I guess one advantage of it is that most everybody knows what they were doing at the time that the world would have frozen. I was asleep in my dorm room in sophmore year of college in Rapid City, SD at the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology.
2. Tim Pratt as the major character. It really annoys me when a writer writes a story about themselves. Of all the characters in the world that could provide the most compelling point of view, the author thinks only of the author? The choice to write as self always strikes me as either arrogant or lazy, I'm not sure which. Honestly, a few minutes into realizing that Tim was writing of Tim I was very tempted to just hit Next. But I said to myself "Self, Tim Pratt has never let you down before. Stick with the story and it'll turn out to be pretty good."
3. The ending.
I'm very curious what other people thought the ending was trying to say, and also what the authorial intent was. I think I must've gotten a much different interpretation about it. To me, it pretty much said straight out in Tim Pratt's own words "Yeah, I know this isn't a very good story, and I'm now famous enough that you listened to it all the way to the end. I bet you feel pretty stupid now, don't you?" This especially bugged me because I didn't think it was a very good story, and HAD considered turning it off in the middle, but had stuck with it because I wanted to give him a chance.
I hope someone else has an alternate interpretation--I'd like to learn that I'm totally off-base on what I thought the ending was saying.
-
Well, points 1 and 2 are purely matters of personal taste. Neither of them are issues for me personally but to each their own. But point three? I did not get that feeling at ALL. I strongly suspect your feelings on the ending were heavily influenced by the fact the story was already strongly not to your taste on two different points.
For one thing, you seem to be taking the story as if its actually Tim Pratt speaking and meaning those words. Its not Tim Pratt the real world Tim Pratt, its Tim Pratt the "fake" world Tim Pratt who's saying those things and is only speaking of his own experience. He's famous in his virtual world because of the revolutionary missives he's sending out. He's just wondering what happened to the "real" version of him. Also, after typing that paragraph out my head now hurts. :P Well, I guess that's the main thing really - the narrator isn't the real Tim Pratt, he's the fictional Tim Pratt.
I personally dig the meta stuff and enjoyed how it was used in this story.
-
But point three? I did not get that feeling at ALL. I strongly suspect your feelings on the ending were heavily influenced by the fact the story was already strongly not to your taste on two different points.
I don't think that I interpreted the ending that way only because I disliked the story. If I recall correctly, the final paragraph paraphrased along the lines of "If I had continued uninterrupted in that other world, I wonder if I would have become a famous writer. So famous that no one could resist my name appeal. Well, you're reading this, aren't you?"
That final sentence addressed directly to the reader, for me, crossed the point of view between Tim.1 (the simulation) into Tim.0 (our own beloved real-life person), implying that I only made it all the way to the end of the story because Tim.0 has enough name recognition that ANYONE would read to the end because it's Tim-point-friggin-0 and everyone knows Tim.0 is infallible! Maybe the shift between Tim.1 and Tim.0 at the end was not intended, and was completely a figment of my imagination. That's entirely possible.
(As an aside: an author writing himself into a story makes for an interesting conundrum when trying to follow the One Rule here. How do I criticize the character of Tim.1 without implicitly criticizing Tim.0? Well, I'm trying--hopefully I don't cross the fuzzy line in the sand.)
Well, I guess that's the main thing really - the narrator isn't the real Tim Pratt, he's the fictional Tim Pratt.
Hmmm... that's an interesting argument, which I'm not sure I totally agree with. According to the premise of the story, at the moment of the plane hitting the tower, Tim.1 was identical to Tim.0 in every way. It is only afterward that they diverge. Since that's right in the premise, and I trust Tim's writing skill, I'm going to assume that's 100% accurate. If that's the case, then any criticism of Tim.1 at the time of the event is totally a criticism of Tim.0. This will be less true as time goes on, but I'm not sure it's clear how much time has actually passed (I may have missed that) so I'm assuming it's not terribly long after the event--yes, the catastrophic event can change people, but he reacts the same way that Tim.0 would react because the simulation is supposed to be so exact. So if Tim.1 says something which bothers me, it's not quite so easy for me to just say Tim.0 does not equal Tim.1.
If they're really identical at the time of the branch, then what Tim.1 says is exactly what Tim.0 would say if the same circumstance were to happen to him.
If they're not really identical at the time of the branch, then that's a flaw in the writing--it undermines the whole premise of the story. And who knows Tim better than Tim? If Tim can't write Tim's POV accurately, I'd be very very surprised.
-
If that's the case, then any criticism of Tim.1 at the time of the event is totally a criticism of Tim.0. This will be less true as time goes on, but I'm not sure it's clear how much time has actually passed (I may have missed that) so I'm assuming it's not terribly long after the event
I assumed it took place a little under 9 years after the (aborted) attack, at least in simulation time. (Doing a little web-searching, I find that it was more likely to be closer to 7 years, given that it was published in the June 2009 issue of Interzone and had to go through the submission process before that.)
-
Well, addressing your various points here and there - the thing is the story is meant to be a political pamphlet. His tone in the last paragraph is not addressed to Real Unblinking, but Fake Scientific Experiment Unblinking. You're not supposed to draw comparisons to Real Tim, aside from "well, that didn't happen, so this is what happened to the Real Tim instead". Because, well, he's not talking to YOU! :p
This will be less true as time goes on, but I'm not sure it's clear how much time has actually passed (I may have missed that) so I'm assuming it's not terribly long after the event--yes, the catastrophic event can change people, but he reacts the same way that Tim.0 would react because the simulation is supposed to be so exact. So if Tim.1 says something which bothers me, it's not quite so easy for me to just say Tim.0 does not equal Tim.1.
Enough time has passed for his then-girlfriend to leave him and his hopes and dreams of them sharing a future and having a family to crash and burn, pretty much destroying a huge and very important part of his life. If that isn't completely personally altering I don't know what would be. Anyway, who can say for sure how any of us would react if we found out we were not real? :P You can't really make an accurate assessment of that. Heh.
However enough major stuff has gone on in his life that I think its pretty fair to say Tim 2 in the last paragraph is fairly different from Tim the Original.
(this is all a little weird to write about).
-
A little?
-
OK more than a little, I guess. :p I hope I'm not inadvertently crossing any lines for the sake of literary analysis. :P
-
But point three? I did not get that feeling at ALL. I strongly suspect your feelings on the ending were heavily influenced by the fact the story was already strongly not to your taste on two different points.
I don't think that I interpreted the ending that way only because I disliked the story. If I recall correctly, the final paragraph paraphrased along the lines of "If I had continued uninterrupted in that other world, I wonder if I would have become a famous writer. So famous that no one could resist my name appeal. Well, you're reading this, aren't you?"
I don't think this is a fair paraphrase.
I think a more accurate paraphrase is "If I didn't live in a screwed-up experiment, maybe I would have been a famous writer. Actually, come to think of it, in this screwed up experiment I am a famous writer, as you (other people in experiment world) are reading my pamphlets."
-
But point three? I did not get that feeling at ALL. I strongly suspect your feelings on the ending were heavily influenced by the fact the story was already strongly not to your taste on two different points.
I don't think that I interpreted the ending that way only because I disliked the story. If I recall correctly, the final paragraph paraphrased along the lines of "If I had continued uninterrupted in that other world, I wonder if I would have become a famous writer. So famous that no one could resist my name appeal. Well, you're reading this, aren't you?"
I don't think this is a fair paraphrase.
I think a more accurate paraphrase is "If I didn't live in a screwed-up experiment, maybe I would have been a famous writer. Actually, come to think of it, in this screwed up experiment I am a famous writer, as you (other people in experiment world) are reading my pamphlets."
I agree with eytanz, and would further note that the statement about how widely read the pamphlet is comes at a remove, as a "careful what you wish for" from the buddy.
-
I think it *is* fair to say that it's often hard to distinguish the authorial voice from a prominent main character's voice, and that line becomes even muddier and harder to dig out when the author is writing a literal self-insert. It then becomes a little hard to react appropriately to the "character" of the author or to distinguish what is meta from what is within the story.
-
Well, addressing your various points here and there - the thing is the story is meant to be a political pamphlet. His tone in the last paragraph is not addressed to Real Unblinking, but Fake Scientific Experiment Unblinking. You're not supposed to draw comparisons to Real Tim, aside from "well, that didn't happen, so this is what happened to the Real Tim instead". Because, well, he's not talking to YOU! :p
I"m not sure that I picked up while reading that this was supposed to be on a pamphlet. I knew that they were going to spread the word, but not that this was actually supposed to be the medium.
So, wait, the whole story was on the pamphlet? If so, it wasn't a very well-written pamphlet.
1. That would be a very long pamphlet, how many folds does it have, 50?
2. There's a lot of unnecessary exposition if the intended audience of the pamphlet lives in the simulated world--why would he have to describe in the pamphlet what everyone in the world would already have known?
3. The ending also makes no sense as a pamphlet. Why would his intended audience give a crap about his musings about what his other life would've been like. Most likely they've already had the same musings and have no reason to be interested in the pamphleteer's own irrelevant musings.
The fact that it was on the pamphlet doesn't improve my opinion of the story. It just doesn't make sense as the content of a pamphlet, so if it had been intended for that medium it would need to be much shorter and less explanatory of well-known events, as well as GETTING TO THE POINT OF THE PAMPHLET much faster. If you think I have a short attention span on stories, it is much shorter if I'm glancing at a pamphlet. Unless I'm trapped in a waiting room I will probably give up after a paragraph if it's not interesting enough. Writing it in a way that made sense for a pamphlet probably would be hard to understand for those of us in our world who did not experience those events--but that doesn't change that it doesn't work well as a pamphlet.
And even with all that in mind, having the pamphlet refer to Tim.0 at the end was a mistake--if he hadn't done that, then the alternate interpretation that was my first conclusion would not have occurred. I still wouldn't have liked the story, but at least it wouldn't have come across as a nose-thumbing at the end. And did the reference to Tim.0 enhance the story in any way, even with the other interpretation? It didn't seem like it to me.
-
Well, you have some points about rehashing stuff the intended audience probably already knew, though it personally worked just fine for me regardless. I would argue the length of the pamphlet was, well, he wanted to tell his whole story, not just an excerpt from it, to let other people know how he got to where he was, how he and his friend discovered the.. foldy.. uppy.. edge of the virtual reality or whatever, and why people should act on it.
Its also possible that only the last part is part of the pamphlet and the rest is just telling the story of how he came to author the pamphlet. I disagree that referring to Tim.0 was a mistake. How many other people were wondering what their "real" selves were like?? Most people, I imagine. He was relating to his audience by sharing his own experience. So yes, IMHO it did enhance the story.
I just don't get the "thumb nosing" at all - doesn't read like that to me in the least. So I dunno.
-
Its also possible that only the last part is part of the pamphlet and the rest is just telling the story of how he came to author the pamphlet.
Hmmm,, I thought I'd replied to this--guess I must have forgotten to hit "Post"?
Anyway, maybe you're right that just the last part is the pamphlet--that would certainly make more sense, but it didn't really seem to be supported by anything in the story. Don't pamphlets normally have titles to catch your attention? I would've thought that if just the last part had been the pamphlet there would've been some title emphasized with capital-type emphasis, but I didn't note anything like that (maybe I missed it).
If the whole story is the pamphlet, then the title is also not very pamphletic. If I see a pamphlet titled "Unexpected Outcomes" my eyes would not linger long enough on it for it to remain in my memory. And, to boot, it doesn't really seem to be describing anything in particular. What outcomes are unexpected, and who is not expecting them? If Tim. 1 is trying to spread the word about the experiment, then why not have something that's more descriptive like "The Experiment Continues" or even something with more of a hook like "They Are Watching" or "Do You Know Why You Will Never See Rain Again?" or "Where Have All the Babies Gone?" or "WTF: Why Wasn't Disease Discontinued?"
-
I don't have the text handy, but I heard it the same way Talia did - as the last part, where StoryTim is wondering what he would have been in the real world and making a call to arms, is reading from a pamphlet.
-
I don't have the text handy, but I heard it the same way Talia did - as the last part, where StoryTim is wondering what he would have been in the real world and making a call to arms, is reading from a pamphlet.
So did I, but I think that Unblinking makes a reasonable point: the whole story isn't - or shouldn't be - a pamphlet; it's too long. But there wasn't anything that signified a transition from 'story' to 'flyer', at least not in the reading, so the listener (and maybe the reader, too) is left wondering if the whole thing is meant to be a pamphlet - in which case it suffers from the shortcomings Unblinking pointed out - or if not, just where the pamphlet part began.
-
For what it's worth, the story itself says the following about it:
[...]we made this little 'zine, this chain letter, and started sending it around, updating it with new editions as we learn more. Pages pass from hand to hand, and some people read it out loud in town squares and the ruins of shopping malls, and some people shout my words over shortwave radio.
-
That seems more plausible than a pamphlet. Thanks for the memory jog!
-
That seems more plausible than a pamphlet. Thanks for the memory jog!
Yes, thanks, makes more sense as a chain letter. I'd still say it contains waaay too much information for its intended audience, sort of like me explaining several pages of details about September 11th as if y'all hadn't heard of it before, but it's better than a pamphlet at least.
-
Sorry, pamphlet was just me using a catchall phrase for "means with which to spread the word."
:/
-
I really loved this story. I'm not one for analysing stories massively but this one really took my attention. Maybe it was because of the 9/11 refference that caught my attention.
I generally like Tim Pratt's work but this one has got me at the point where i will likely search out his work.
The pregnancy thing had accured to me also, as had why was the weather the easiest thing that could be 'turned off' and why not turn off things that had little use like Wasps.
I'm the type of consumer that appreciates a story whether its a great meaningful piece of work such as The Shawshank Redemption, or a mindless wham bam thank you work like the video game based film DOOM(Yes i'm using films to make my point)
Now i'm gonna go back through my itunes and pick out all the Tim Pratt stories and re-listen to them.
-
I loved the whole experimental situation and the references to the Zimbardo and Milgram experiments.
I'm Milgram's daughter, and this story reminded me how when he died, sometimes those of us who knew him well would say that maybe that he wasn't really dead - that it was just another Milgram experiment so that our reactions could be observed. I"m sure if he were alive, I'd be sharing this story with him and discussing it with him.
Well, you had far more reason than I to really love that social psychology references actually made it into a story which is supposed to be about...social psychology on a grand scale. Its funny because the Prison Experiment leapt to my mind very early in the story just because I was thinking that if this really happened someone would probably blow up the planet. This is the dead opposite of the Milgram and Zimbardo findings- that essentially we are all a bunch of lemmings (I originally wrote lemurs...what the heck is going on in my brain?). I wonder what Dr. Z would think, also.
What would the outliers do?
And, more importantly I spent most of the story wondering...Where are all the social psychologists? Didn't they figure it out first? You can't tell me some random friend of Tim's is more likely to parse out the real experiment than a bunch of people that do it for a living? That was my sticking point.
Otherwise...interesting. Don't mind 9/11 reference. Could have been anything big, but for the story to work for me it would have to be within my lifetime. I mean, it would be interesting if the sim stopped at Hitler's invasion of Poland or Hiroshima but nobody would have known what a sim was back then and I wouldn't have been able to relate. So, 9/11 is ok by me.
-
I confess I held my breath when Tim Pratt the Realer invoked 9/11. But in the end, It got a chuckle from me. Okay, word that we may all be part of a simulation would be a bigger game-changer than the actual events of 9/11. Well played.
Likewise when Tim Pratt the Character wondered about whoever had been the inspiration for Tim Pratt the Character. When first introduced to the multiple universes idea, who hasn't wondered if they'd be better or worse off? The 'Careful what you wish for,' made the famous author speculation work for me, but I thought Tim Pratt the Realer was sharing his ambitions (because it did seem to be an innate trait of original and simulation) rather than bragging about his success.
I liked the transition to the pamphlet. It was clear from the narrator's tone, and shift to 2nd person. It reminded me of this little 18th century zine "Common Sense." (Not a short read either, btw ;) )
In short, I liked this. It made me chuckle, it made me think.
-
And, more importantly I spent most of the story wondering...Where are all the social psychologists? Didn't they figure it out first? You can't tell me some random friend of Tim's is more likely to parse out the real experiment than a bunch of people that do it for a living? That was my sticking point.
Ahh, but you see, the programmers KNEW that the social psychologists would figure it out, so everyone who had a psychology degree was wasn't faithfully reproduced. Instead of recreating the real persons brain and thought patterns, they just inserted an Eliza script. No one ever figured it out.
-
I really enjoyed this story. Right from the beginning, I was interested enough to not even begin to doze on my morning train ride.
I kept looking at how many minutes were left in the story to try to guess how it was going to end. I think I would have liked a little more at the ending, but I can't really imagine what.
I also liked the snarky names of the 'doctor' throughout.
The sound quality was distracting at first, but I managed to ignore it once I got into the story.
Thanks!
-
Having fallen a month or so behind the posting of new Escape Pod episodes I have the added treat of being able to listen to a story and then see a month's worth of discussion. The discussion in this thread fascinates me for a bunch of reasons, both for what it focused on and for what it didn't focus on.
I liked this story a great deal. In part because it could be absolutely positively 100% true right now: For all we know our world blinked into existence this morning and we were all imbued with false memories and the researchers are watching us right now. Creepy.
I also liked how just when I was getting suspicious about the plot, Tim dropped the big twist on us.
I was surprised, however, that none of the characters (and no one here) took the Holodeck hint to move the conversation in the direction of trying to convince the experimenters to liberate them from the simulation. (I'm sure most of you remember when Moriarty took control of the Enterprise and tried to force the crew to bring him into the real world.)
If I were in the simulation I think I would realize that in the future there are (1) obviously unbelievably powerful supercomputers; (2) beings who view certain advanced forms of artificial intelligence as sentient; and (3) the future researchers probably have the ability to transfer my consciousness into an artificial (or real vat-grown) human body. I'd be making my pitch to be set free!
Lastly, the use of 9/11 as a plot point seemed perfectly reasonable. I live a few blocks from the Pentagon and worked a few blocks from Ground Zero and think about it often as one of the defining terrible parts of our generation. To that end, it seems to be well worth study and analysis by people in the future who will hopefully find such an attack so abhorrent and bizarre as to merit running such a simulation.
The only thing I didn't like about the story was the squeaky chair during the narration but that non-story issue was more than outweighed by the excellence of Norm Sherman as host.
-
This is the 2nd meta story I've heard on EscapePod. Unlike Benjamin Rosenbaum's story, I reeeeeally liked this one. I don't know why--maybe it's because I'm more familiar with Tim Pratt, so I was able to catch the meta more easily. Given, I found the 9/11 part a bit odd, but on the whole, I really enjoyed this. The ending had me laughing out loud. In fact, it makes me want to give Rosenbaum's story another read. Maybe I'll get it more now.
-
I tend to save up Escape Artist stories for long drives, which sometimes mean they can blend together - however, certain stories stand out in my memory. This is one such. Of course, coming from Tim Pratt, the chances of that happening were pretty good.
-
Interesting concept, reminding me of the 13th Floor movie. The story was well-written and well-read. I had lots of fun listening to it, but it felt a bit like snacking on pop-corn: You have fun doing it, but then you're just left with a blank feeling, an empty bucket, and greasy fingers. There was a lot of potential, but it was ultimately a pointless romp for me. I would have like to have seen more stories about the characters in this world, as there are a lot of philosophical questions to explore. If you knew definitely that nobody really existed, and that there were absolutely no moral consequences, wouldn't that give you license to rape, murder, steal, kick small kittens? Also, how would you know or prove sentience or free will? For that matter how do you even know that your own memories are real?
-
Also, how would you know or prove sentience or free will?
The same way you prove it in our world:
I think, therefore I am.
:)
-
Also, how would you know or prove sentience or free will?
The same way you prove it in our world:
I think, therefore I am.
:)
...that proves it to no one but yourself. You need to work harder to pass the Turing Test, much less prove sentience to an outside observer.
-
Also, how would you know or prove sentience or free will?
The same way you prove it in our world:
I think, therefore I am.
:)
...that proves it to no one but yourself. You need to work harder to pass the Turing Test, much less prove sentience to an outside observer.
Plus, you can trick yourself (or be tricked) into believing that you think when you really don't. If I'm programmed to believe that I think and make choices, even when I'm not, well, I'll still think that I think.
-
Also, how would you know or prove sentience or free will?
The same way you prove it in our world:
I think, therefore I am.
:)
...that proves it to no one but yourself. You need to work harder to pass the Turing Test, much less prove sentience to an outside observer.
But if I am, then there's no reason to think that other people I meet aren't, unless I am somehow mentally unique. If I am the same as everyone else in every observable way, then it makes more sense to assume that others are like me in that aspect. I could assume that I am the only sentient being in the history of the universe, but I'd call that a God Complex.
Except for people on the internet--everyone knows that everyone on the internet is artificial.
And don't get me started on the Turing Test as a measure of intelligence--it's highly flawed. It only measures the "human-ness" of a subject, not the intelligence. If you had a true artificial intelligence, to pass the Turing Test it would have to hamstring its reactions to simulate forgetfulness, slowness of thought, and irrational emotion. That's not a test of intelligence, it's a test of human mimicry, which are not the same thing.
-
Also, how would you know or prove sentience or free will?
The same way you prove it in our world:
I think, therefore I am.
:)
...that proves it to no one but yourself. You need to work harder to pass the Turing Test, much less prove sentience to an outside observer.
Plus, you can trick yourself (or be tricked) into believing that you think when you really don't. If I'm programmed to believe that I think and make choices, even when I'm not, well, I'll still think that I think.
If your mind is hardcoded with false beliefs, then is it better to come to the conclusion that no conclusion can be reached? Your senses are your window to the world, and your mind is the machine that processes your senses. If one or the other does not exist, then no conclusion you ever reach will be correct--including the statement that you can be tricked into thinking you think.
To draw any conclusion about anything, I have to have some kernel that I believe is true upon which to build everything else.
1. I think, therefore I am.
2. My senses provide some representation of the outside world, flawed and/or limited though it may be.
If you throw out those assumptions, then there's not really any basis for anything else.
-
....
To draw any conclusion about anything, I have to have some kernel that I believe is true upon which to build everything else.
1. I think, therefore I am.
2. My senses provide some representation of the outside world, flawed and/or limited though it may be.
If you throw out those assumptions, then there's not really any basis for anything else.
Sounds like faith to me. :-)
-
"I think, therefore I am."
Also, therefore rice pudding and income tax. ;)
-
To draw any conclusion about anything, I have to have some kernel that I believe is true upon which to build everything else.
1. I think, therefore I am.
2. My senses provide some representation of the outside world, flawed and/or limited though it may be.
If you throw out those assumptions, then there's not really any basis for anything else.
I'm not saying it's not useful to make those assumptions. I'm just pointing out that they ARE assumptions and therefore "cogito ergo sum" doesn't (and can't) actually prove anything.
-
To draw any conclusion about anything, I have to have some kernel that I believe is true upon which to build everything else.
1. I think, therefore I am.
2. My senses provide some representation of the outside world, flawed and/or limited though it may be.
If you throw out those assumptions, then there's not really any basis for anything else.
I'm not saying it's not useful to make those assumptions. I'm just pointing out that they ARE assumptions and therefore "cogito ergo sum" doesn't (and can't) actually prove anything.
And I'm not disagreeing with that either. But if I decide that I don't exist, then nothing else I do or experience matters in the slightest, even to me. And, well, that just sounds boring.
-
....
To draw any conclusion about anything, I have to have some kernel that I believe is true upon which to build everything else.
1. I think, therefore I am.
2. My senses provide some representation of the outside world, flawed and/or limited though it may be.
If you throw out those assumptions, then there's not really any basis for anything else.
Sounds like faith to me. :-)
The faith upon which all science is based--believing in evidence that you observe. If you don't believe you can observe, than all science is nonsense! :)
-
There's a difference between faith and trust.
If I'm going to believe in (say) leprechauns, I have to have faith in order to do so, because I have not observed any evidence to support their existence. I have heard stories and claims and the like, but I haven't directly observed any evidence, however weak.
In the case of science, I may have to start out with faith that what I am sensing is what's actually there, but the longer I do that, the more predictions I can make about the world around me. E.g. that if I reach out what I believe to be my 'fingers', in what seems, to my limited senses, to be a sufficient 'distance', in what I perceive to be that what-I-shall-call 'direction', I will experience something that I name a 'feeling' of the wall I encounter.
And when I do encounter the wall, my prediction has been provisionally verified (pending further testing). Every time I test my senses and my predictions (at least seem to) come true, then I go further down the road from 'faith' to 'trust' in my perception of the world around me, to the degree that I act as though what I believe - i.e. that what I see around me is 'real' - is true.
Faith is belief in something despite a lack of evidence, or worse, in the face of evidence to the contrary. Trust occurs when you believe in things (or people) that either you have tested to your satisfaction or that someone you trust in turn has done so (and that chain of trust can be arbitrarily long). Trust is harder to gain and easier to lose, but ultimately, I think, more valuable and useful.
-
But how do you know that the world isn't meeting your expectations because it is imaginary and your mind is forcing restrictions upon it?
I do see your point, though. But just because the world appears to be very consistent in some respects doesn't prove that it's not just a very consistent illusion. Which I don't think it is, but my point is that if one doesn't believe in one's own existence and doesn't believe one's senses, then every other "fact" is debatable.
-
Yup. It's generally useless on a pragmatic level to discard the "I am real and so is the stuff around me" assumption. Still, "I think therefore I am" doesn't actually prove anything; the reason we can safely assume that we are sentient and that other people around us are sentient is because experiential information is mostly concordant with that situation. Everyone reacts as though they are separate and sentient, and until we find the red pill and the blue pill, we don't really have any way to test or prove that we aren't all living in our own personal Matrix, so we might as well assume that reality is real and get on with it.
-
Also, am I the only person who flashed on Doctor Who when Tim referred to the lab tech as "The Doctor" at the beginning?
yes I did :)
Good but felt to be missing lots and ended a bit fast
-
(http://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/20101124c.gif) (http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2073)
-
....
To draw any conclusion about anything, I have to have some kernel that I believe is true upon which to build everything else.
1. I think, therefore I am.
2. My senses provide some representation of the outside world, flawed and/or limited though it may be.
If you throw out those assumptions, then there's not really any basis for anything else.
Sounds like faith to me. :-)
The faith upon which all science is based--believing in evidence that you observe. If you don't believe you can observe, than all science is nonsense! :)
I disagree. There are plenty of metaphysical conclusions and structures that can be based such a conclusion. Buddhism, for example, is entirely based on the assumption that the self actually doesn't exist, and that all of physical things we perceive around us are just illusory and self-created, and that what is actually "real" (in the metaphysical sense) can not be directly perceived.
It is entirely possible to have a scientific and rationally-built paradigm built around such assumptions, as long as you keep in mind that it's at best only a model of reality: a model that might be very accurate and very useful, but still only a model.
-
I think that we have a classic case of life imitating art on our hands.
Story from Slashdot (http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/12/29/0621237/Living-Earth-Simulator-Aims-To-Simulate-Everything).
-
I love all the metafiction. I've seen some whining about writers having main characters be writers, but the metafictional, autobiographical aspect of this story adds a lot of emotional power, and makes me think about what the me in this other world would be doing. Maybe I'd become friends with Tim Pratt.
Seriously, the author as a main character absolutely makes this story. In some stories it can seem a bit wankish, but it can also be a useful device, as Pratt shows us here. Somebody above said it was "Chicken Soup for the Post-Apocalyptic Soul", but it is darker and more combative than that would imply. Tim Pratt is not endorsing passive resignation to our fate, even if we are all simulations.
The best part of the story is both Pratt's anger toward the end, and the reader's ability to capture it.
This is one of my favorites of the year.