I started reading Seveneves and so far it’s really good
This is some kind of trap, isn’t it, Neal
Wait really I’ve loved all his other stuff and I’ve been kinda slogging through the the first hundred pages of seveneves.
This is confusing. Neal Stephenson man.
So far it’s largely about an only-slightly-ficitionalized version of Neil deGrasse Tyson responding to the fact that the moon has exploded. Which is enough to entertain me for a while. (Definitely moreso than the nothing that happened for the first … 150? pages of Anathem)
Anathem just annoyed me for apparently siding with Husserl over Witttgenstein. And by somehow producing a world in which they had empirical evidence for Platonism.
The point when I really wanted to throw Anathem against the wall was when, in the endless philosophy conference near the end, some dude was like “we have the mathematical concepts we have because they were equilibria in the dynamics of interacting, distinct versions of mathematics in Platonic Heaven”
And I’m like, wait, if you’re saying that math is just an arbitrary feature of our world that could have been different, then what do you mean by “dynamics” and “equilibria” and why do these things apply to Platonic Heaven and how would you describe them without math
(via jadagul)
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disconcision reblogged this from nostalgebraist and added:
i actually enjoyed anathem, mostly because the...
Oh, yeah, the evil postmodernists made me roll my eyes. Especially when the main character has a public debate with one...
urpriest reblogged this from nostalgebraist and added:
The thing that bugged me about Anathem wasn’t that it was a world in which they had empirical evidence for Platonism, it...
jadagul liked this
dagny-hashtaggart reblogged this from nostalgebraist and added:
Okay I’m about 90% sure that having empirical evidence for platonism is missing the point of platonism entirely, and I...
Anathem just annoyed me for apparently siding with Husserl over Witttgenstein. And by somehow producing a world in which...
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eudaemaniacal said: a really fun game i played at the store the last couple days is “spot the guy frantically searching for one of our last copies of seveneves”