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God's Debris

Cosmo

Radioactive Rationalist
Cosmo
Joined
Jul 23, 2004
Messages
1,182
A friend sent me a link to this story. It's written by Scott Adams, whom some of you may know as the author behind the famous "Dilbert" comic strip. It's around 130 double-spaced, very large-font pages long - it should only take about an hour or so to go through.

While Adams states that the views portrayed within are not his own, it's still an interesting read. Indeed, in the introduction, Adams calls it a "132-page thought experiment wrapped in a fictional story".

A number of thoughts came to my mind as I was reading it - everything from "that would make an interesting sci-fi movie!" to "what the hell does that mean?" to "Adams my boy, you can write a damn good comic strip but you (or your character, I guess) couldn't be more wrong about this." My reasons for posting it in this forum are twofold:

* I may not have agreed with every part of it, but I did enjoy it. I think that some other people might as well. :)
* Some of the more nitty-gritty sections - the part about evolution, the stuff towards the end about relativity - I thought were misrepresented, misquoted or generally misshapen in the text. I'm a longtime lurker on these forums, and I know that it would take a more educated and critical mind than my own to really pick apart his story - and it deserves a good picking-apart! I also know that there are minds here capable of such critiquing. :)

The story is a free PDF download from here (mirror here). Give it a try, it's an interesting read!
 
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I stumbled upon this story today when I read the Dibertblog, in which Adams referred to the story with a link to the download.

I also enjoyed the story, and I think it has some merit as a thought experiment. Some parts are also quite amusing, I particularly enjoyed the section on the evolution of cutlery (and other kitchen utensils).
 
Adams is a great writer, but he's very much into wooism. There is this long dead-pan serious passage in the "Dilbert Future" book about how he became a cartoonist through repeating to himself several times a day that he would become a wildly successful cartoonist and thus changing the nature of his reality and effectively choosing a reality in which that happened (iirc this was part of a discussion on infinite alternative realities we could choose between). He claimed he knew others that achieved their wildest dreams this way and said it couldn't hurt to do it.

It sure didn't seem he was kidding in any way, I lost a bit of respect for him after that.

--- G.
 
If you want to lose even more, be sure to check out his argument with the Pharyngula blog.
 
Morrison's Lament said:
Adams is a great writer, but he's very much into wooism. There is this long dead-pan serious passage in the "Dilbert Future" book about how he became a cartoonist through repeating to himself several times a day that he would become a wildly successful cartoonist and thus changing the nature of his reality and effectively choosing a reality in which that happened (iirc this was part of a discussion on infinite alternative realities we could choose between). He claimed he knew others that achieved their wildest dreams this way and said it couldn't hurt to do it.

It sure didn't seem he was kidding in any way, I lost a bit of respect for him after that.
Click to expand...

On the other hand, he's not recommending anything dangerous or costly (unless pencil and paper are high cost commodities for you.)

And I did try this. Got no notable results. Not even writer's cramp.
 
Oh, I know it's not costly but it's still woo, still a waste of time and still doesn't do anything except make one feel silly afterwards. I suppose I'm a bit touchy about this because I have suffered from OCD, and the notion of repeating weird things to myself over and over to alter reality doesn't exactly remind me of good times in the past.

I also think homeopathy would still be dodgy even if it was free.

In any case, I think Adams is a great and talented writer, and I agree what he proposes isn't exactly harmful or motivated by profit. It's just good to know where people stand on such things, and he clearly isn't on the side of reason.

--- G.
 
I enjoyed it, overall. Adams specifcally states the viewpoints aren't necessarily his own, but some seem remarkably similar to what he's saying on his blog (which I've just glancd through)

The section on gravity was quite fun. The section on evolution was a bit of a mistake apart from (yes!) the evolution of cooking utensils, which was quite funny. Adams shows how he doesn't really understand the subject at all. I'm a layman, and I could drive a train through the holes in his argument. Half of it hinges on evolution only adding things to creatures to make them more complex, for a start. Appendix, anyone?

The talk about it being fiction or non-fiction. Well, it's a story. That's fiction. If he wants to use fiction as a means of putting forward some ideas, that's still fiction. See also: Atlas Shrugged, Zen &..., The Bible, etc. Saying it could be considered non-fiction is misleading. Saying it's a thought-experiment is a little arrogant, too :)

No intention of reading the sequel.
 
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