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comment by OftenBen
OftenBen  ·  2998 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: January 11th: What are you reading this week?

And it was GOOD too.

Not like, Heinlein good. But a fun read. I get a lot of enjoyment just from the speculative future portion.

And the vampire thing is cool, if a bit hamfisted with the 'anti-euclideans' or whatever.





kleinbl00  ·  2998 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Diff'rent stroX for diff'rent folx. Blindsight is in my bottom 5 across all genres.

OftenBen  ·  2998 days ago  ·  link  ·  

How do you feel about the whole 'Intelligence can evolve without self-awareness/sentience' argument?

kleinbl00  ·  2998 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I feel that it was a canard Watts used to explain apocalyptic malevolence, rather than an actual exploration of the concept. It was also a sideshow compared to the anti-orthogonal vampires, the anti-VR trope and whatever bizarre made-up mental disability the protagonist had. Watts shuffled about five half-baked ideas into a narrative so that he didn't have to fully-bake any single one of them. It's an amateur move.

Particularly as the whole "intelligence-without self-awareness" idea was spiked in the endzone by Solaris in '61 and through the goalposts in 2005 by Spin.

OftenBen  ·  2998 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I'VE ALREADY ORDERED TWO BOOKS TODAY DAMN YOUR EYES.

kleinbl00  ·  2998 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Libraries, bitch.