good news, everyone! eliezer is writing fiction again - eviltoast

“glowfic” apparently. written in a roleplay forum format.

This is not a story for kids, even less so than HPMOR. There is romance, there is sex, there are deliberately bad kink practices whose explicit purpose is to get people to actually hurt somebody else so that they’ll end up damned to Hell, and also there’s math.

start here. or don’t, of course.

  • Evinceo@awful.systems
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    10 months ago

    Ok, I tried giving it a fair shake, and I guess it’s got the same problem as every other forum roleplay: it’s fun to roleplay, not fun to read someone else’s roleplay.

    • swlabr@awful.systems
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      10 months ago

      Yeah, that’s where I’m at. I don’t think this is Yud doing HPMOR and trying to rope randos into rationality. Well, maybe he’s trying to rope the non-rat glowfic enjoyers, idk. In any case, this is Yud playing with a pal and having fun, I guess? Take that as you will.

      • gerikson@awful.systems
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        10 months ago

        As long as he’s writing collab forum pr0n and not hindering the creation of the Acausal Robot God, it’s all good.

        Edit Yud is living disproof of the thesis that spending a large number of hours doing something makes one good at it.

        • swlabr@awful.systems
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          10 months ago

          I kind of wish there was a space in awful.systems to dunk on malcolm gladwell et al but it’s probably a little too far removed from stem fuckery.

          If you haven’t listened to the “outliers” episode of the “if books could kill” podcast, i recommend it!

              • self@awful.systemsM
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                10 months ago

                hah I’m down for this! I wanted to start on the podcast you linked last night til I got sidetracked, but it looks like they tackle a bunch of my least favorite books that have been dropped on my doorstep like dead birds by family members

                broadly I’d say this is in-scope for our instance, because a lot of the writing tricks that the 90s thrift store fodder pop psychologists used to get famous got adopted directly by futurist authors to sound smart (and get famous), which in turn shaped how our current crop of rationalists and technofascists communicate. it’d be interesting to analyze that awful lineage.

                I’d say the two outstanding questions I have before we go for something like this are around scope and (of course) a good name. do we want this new community to sneer at the genres Deborah listed only, or is any crank/charlatan author fair game? should we start an interest check thread for this idea and discuss these things there?

                • froztbyte@awful.systems
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                  10 months ago

                  I generally don’t get to podcast at all ever because sensory fuckery interplaying with no effective space to listen to them (wfh, and when I go walking etc I listen to music not casts), so for me discussions and posts are where I tend to get the most info about topics

                  But I’d definitely be keen for an antibook club sub, whether here or elsewhere

                  Anecdotally, the only one of these books I ever purchased was Superfreakonomics (after it kept coming up in conversations around me in uni etc). I made it to page 2.5 before I had so many “okay, gonna have to research that claim” notes that 1) I’ve never opened that book again since, 2) it rapidly taught me something I’d had an inkling/guess of but then became certain of: popular != good. It’s been an extremely useful guideline in the years since

      • Evinceo@awful.systems
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        10 months ago

        glowfic enjoyers

        A real category?

        Seems like a write-only medium.

        But then, LitRPG also exists, much to my confusion and dismay.

          • swlabr@awful.systems
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            10 months ago

            There’s a fine line between “no kinkshaming” and Karl Popper’s paradox of tolerance

          • Evinceo@awful.systems
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            10 months ago

            I can’t understand people who watch streams of other people playing D&D but I know those are wildly popular.

            I suppose people also watch other people play video games which is about the point where I started to feel like a confused out of touch elder.

            • locallynonlinear@awful.systems
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              10 months ago

              I love DnD and TTRPGs. I even love watching some streams when the quality is high. But I’m with you slides in pocket protector I don’t generally like this new wave of people who bring the expectation to my tables that every scene and every situation is a massive mellow drama mary sue projection for their OC that must be maximized.

              What was that about wit and brevity? Simple done well?

            • swlabr@awful.systems
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              10 months ago

              While I don’t listen to any “narrative play” podcasts (as I’ve heard them labelled as) I do listen to an amount of improv based podcasts. So on some level I understand the appeal. Also if you like comic books or blaseball or anything lore-heavy, that would be adjacent to narrative play.

              Let’s plays are speedrun adjacent so I also kinda like them. That being said that’s just what I get out of them. Everything I enjoy I have in mind that it ain’t for everyone (boy I wish it were for more people though…)

            • froztbyte@awful.systems
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              10 months ago

              I’ll occasionally watch people play something that I deem as “looks interesting, but not enough so that I’ll want to purchase and play this myself”

              (Also for watching high-skill players do their thing, but that’s a different dynamic I think)