Some Desperate Glory (Tesh)
Jun. 19th, 2023 10:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahn5/5. I loved, absolutely LOVED this book. It's like Tesh went into my brain and was like, ok! let's dive deep into things you care about, through the medium of fiction! But also in a couple of places I may be imposing my own headcanon onto it which is giving it the benefit of the doubt? It's a little annoying because I can't explain either a) why I loved it SO MUCH, or b) why you should take my loving it with a grain of salt -- without what I consider massive spoilers. (I did not know anything about this book before reading it other than that it was SF, and I loved reading it not knowing anything about it.) So... if you haven't read it yet, uh, read it (with the proviso that you might not like it as much as I did?) and then talk to me about it, and if you have read it, well, talk to me about it :)
(The beginning of the book has content notes, and there are quite a few -- so if there is content that you may want to know about, you should look at those first. If you've e.g. been reading any of the Catriona Ward books I've been writing about, pfft, you're almost certainly fine as far as the content notes; unlike Ward, there are in fact no graphic descriptions of tortured/dead animals :P )
-What struck me the most about the book is that SDG is, on a fundamental level, about the process of changing the way one thinks. How does that even work? Tesh asks. How do you even do that? This is a question that has been on my mind recently, especially since I've been thinking about the teenager I used to be, for various reasons. I grew up in the 80's, which -- well, think about everything we thought was okay in the 80's, and you see why I think about this question. I grew up in the South in the 80's, which is its own special thing, for that matter.
How do you change the way you think, when all that you are and all the culture you've been in has told you otherwise? How do you get from the way you think as a teenager (Kyr is definitely Peak Teenager in some ways), which is probably wrong and definitely not compassionate enough, to a way of thinking that is more compassionate? How does that work?
It's not necessarily by someone else telling you that you're wrong. That may be the start of the process, but it only goes so far, even if that someone loves you, even if they want the best for you. The book answer is: well, you cheat, you get a godlike-AI to place you in someone else's brain who doesn't think the way you do, who has other ways of looking at things and who, because she's in your brain, you have to pay attention to.
...only it's not really cheating, it's a real answer, when you come down to it. Because -- the only way this really does happen in real life is to have experiences that make you able to understand someone else's head, or things like reading books, or talking to people, which effectively get you in someone else's head. Kyr gets that process massively sped up, of course, but it's not fundamentally different.
One of the quotes I really loved:
I love that so, so much. I love it because it's true. Kyr is a little like Marius Pontmercy (though quite a bit more competent in many ways, lol) -- she's insufferable, she's almost comically un-self-aware, she's rather horrible, but it's because she's us, too. Or at least me.
-ase told me that this book was very Mass Effect-influenced, which when she told me more about Mass Effect I totally agreed with, but my primary association was Ender's Game and gosh this book is really very much in dialogue with it even while it's nothing like it at all (in fact partially because it's nothing like it at all). But anyway it's clearly a book that is in dialogue with Ender's Game and Mass Effect and Fringe and was written around the same time as Harrow the Ninth in the way it juggles alternate points of view.
-I totally got taken in by the premise of ~militaristic space vengeance base~ and did not realize at all it was actually SAD LOSER ENCLAVE, lol forever. (ase: "You bought the child soldier narrative?") I blame both Ender's Game and all the YA dystopias I have had foisted upon me over the years!
-The trope of the heroine (or hero) who Just Does Not Give Up is a pretty much bulletproof one for me, honestly.
-And also:
Me, after reading it: Aaaaaand I really adored the subtle nods to the problems with AI and how AI is trained, and with the kinds of deep learning techniques we have where we don't necessarily understand how AI comes up with its answers, and with how dependent AI is on its training set, and how you could have this omniscient-seeming AI being who, because of its training set on alien data as the dominant paradigm, totally thinks that killing Earth is A-OK "for the greater good" (and how does it set the metric of "the greater good"? HMM) as it does in Version 3 --
Almost everyone else who has read a review of this book that I have read: So, it seemed like the narrative thought that killing Earth in Version 3 was A-OK and that's really weird??
Me: ...it's possible that I am bringing more of my point of view to this than maybe I should?
(Although I think there's some of this inherent in the text, in the Wisdom's eliding of what "the greater good" means, and all of that.)
-It did occur to me though that there's an odd funneling down of the point of view, like, the scale of the problem sort of went from "killing billions of sentient beings" to "oh, we have to get everyone off Gaea and then it's all OK," although I guess maybe that's what happens when you get rid of your godlike AI; maybe it just becomes, "solve the problem you can solve and that has to be enough." Which is actually also kind of interesting philosophically? Or maybe I'm just a sucker for the plot twist where it turns out that the godlike being HAS TO GO? (hi Dune, LOOKING AT YOU) -- so it didn't hamper my enjoyment too much, but I think a bit more scaffolding for this would have been nice
-And also:
I loved Kyr's companions and her relationships with them so SO much. I ADORED Kyr and Cleo. (Yes please ALL the platonic queer relationships! I am SO there for that!) I adored Kyr and Avi (well, universe-3 Avi, but also universe-1 Avi in how he was so totally broken in ways that weren't at all obvious at first, omg). I adored Kyr and Mags and the way they are always circling around the question of, how CAN they relate to each other in a way that involves Kyr actually seeing Mags? I adored Kyr and Lisabel and I WANT super awkward dating post-canon FIC for them PLEASE THANKS. I absolutely adored Kyr and the Sparrows and how they maybe don't even like Kyr but they trust her in a fundamental kind of way because being a horrible jerk and being extraordinarily trustworthy are both parts of who she is (and the horrible jerk part can change! even if they don't know that part yet!)
(But also: Mags CAN do better than that, Avi is right! :P Mags needs to find himself a nice boy who is... not... Avi! Even if I loved reading about Avi, and even if Avi did make him Minas Tirith :P )
-But also in terms of fanfic, I am super predictable, I also want extremely-ethically-compromised Wisdom AI fanfic about, well, everything! The Wisdom is constantly going through futures where billions and trillions of beings die! It is probably rather insane at this point! but also about how the Wisdom kills itself but leaves a tiny almost-powerless almost-small-enough-to-be-nonsentient remnant behind which is like a baby!Wisdom that just wants to have fun, and the Wisdom itself knows it will be that way and is totally horrified by it, but it's better than everyone dying everywhere and also it wants to save a tiny piece of itself even if it's a tiny let's-have-fun part.
-But back to Kyr, gosh, she just -- okay, have another quote:
And agh, the way that, even when face-to-face with what could be vengeance, she lets go of it, she lets go of blame even when she would have been absolutely correct not to, instead she turns towards the one who at the beginning of the book was the Other, who at the beginning was the Other whom she could blame and look to for revenge, and turns it into saving the Other instead (and yes, Kyr & Yiso is a deeply meaningful relationship to me, I love it) -- this is the true journey of the book. All the alternate universes and godlike AI and time jumping are just -- subsidiary to this.
(The beginning of the book has content notes, and there are quite a few -- so if there is content that you may want to know about, you should look at those first. If you've e.g. been reading any of the Catriona Ward books I've been writing about, pfft, you're almost certainly fine as far as the content notes; unlike Ward, there are in fact no graphic descriptions of tortured/dead animals :P )
-What struck me the most about the book is that SDG is, on a fundamental level, about the process of changing the way one thinks. How does that even work? Tesh asks. How do you even do that? This is a question that has been on my mind recently, especially since I've been thinking about the teenager I used to be, for various reasons. I grew up in the 80's, which -- well, think about everything we thought was okay in the 80's, and you see why I think about this question. I grew up in the South in the 80's, which is its own special thing, for that matter.
How do you change the way you think, when all that you are and all the culture you've been in has told you otherwise? How do you get from the way you think as a teenager (Kyr is definitely Peak Teenager in some ways), which is probably wrong and definitely not compassionate enough, to a way of thinking that is more compassionate? How does that work?
It's not necessarily by someone else telling you that you're wrong. That may be the start of the process, but it only goes so far, even if that someone loves you, even if they want the best for you. The book answer is: well, you cheat, you get a godlike-AI to place you in someone else's brain who doesn't think the way you do, who has other ways of looking at things and who, because she's in your brain, you have to pay attention to.
...only it's not really cheating, it's a real answer, when you come down to it. Because -- the only way this really does happen in real life is to have experiences that make you able to understand someone else's head, or things like reading books, or talking to people, which effectively get you in someone else's head. Kyr gets that process massively sped up, of course, but it's not fundamentally different.
One of the quotes I really loved:
"...it's not like we're collectively brainwashed or anything -- present company excepted--"
Kyr said nothing. She did not think it was present company excepted. She still remembered Avi's awful triumph, in that first timeline, when he'd killed the majo worlds. Gaea had planted its seeds in all of them. They were in Kyr too, she knew they were, putting out shoots that coiled through her the same way Val's total self-belief and her smugness were twisted through everything she'd ever thought or done. Just because Kyr was looking for it now didn't mean she'd find it every time. Just because she knew where she'd come from and what she was didn't mean she was safe from it.
I love that so, so much. I love it because it's true. Kyr is a little like Marius Pontmercy (though quite a bit more competent in many ways, lol) -- she's insufferable, she's almost comically un-self-aware, she's rather horrible, but it's because she's us, too. Or at least me.
-
ase told me that this book was very Mass Effect-influenced, which when she told me more about Mass Effect I totally agreed with, but my primary association was Ender's Game and gosh this book is really very much in dialogue with it even while it's nothing like it at all (in fact partially because it's nothing like it at all). But anyway it's clearly a book that is in dialogue with Ender's Game and Mass Effect and Fringe and was written around the same time as Harrow the Ninth in the way it juggles alternate points of view.-I totally got taken in by the premise of ~militaristic space vengeance base~ and did not realize at all it was actually SAD LOSER ENCLAVE, lol forever. (
ase: "You bought the child soldier narrative?") I blame both Ender's Game and all the YA dystopias I have had foisted upon me over the years!-The trope of the heroine (or hero) who Just Does Not Give Up is a pretty much bulletproof one for me, honestly.
-And also:
Me, after reading it: Aaaaaand I really adored the subtle nods to the problems with AI and how AI is trained, and with the kinds of deep learning techniques we have where we don't necessarily understand how AI comes up with its answers, and with how dependent AI is on its training set, and how you could have this omniscient-seeming AI being who, because of its training set on alien data as the dominant paradigm, totally thinks that killing Earth is A-OK "for the greater good" (and how does it set the metric of "the greater good"? HMM) as it does in Version 3 --
Almost everyone else who has read a review of this book that I have read: So, it seemed like the narrative thought that killing Earth in Version 3 was A-OK and that's really weird??
Me: ...it's possible that I am bringing more of my point of view to this than maybe I should?
(Although I think there's some of this inherent in the text, in the Wisdom's eliding of what "the greater good" means, and all of that.)
-It did occur to me though that there's an odd funneling down of the point of view, like, the scale of the problem sort of went from "killing billions of sentient beings" to "oh, we have to get everyone off Gaea and then it's all OK," although I guess maybe that's what happens when you get rid of your godlike AI; maybe it just becomes, "solve the problem you can solve and that has to be enough." Which is actually also kind of interesting philosophically? Or maybe I'm just a sucker for the plot twist where it turns out that the godlike being HAS TO GO? (hi Dune, LOOKING AT YOU) -- so it didn't hamper my enjoyment too much, but I think a bit more scaffolding for this would have been nice
-And also:
I loved Kyr's companions and her relationships with them so SO much. I ADORED Kyr and Cleo. (Yes please ALL the platonic queer relationships! I am SO there for that!) I adored Kyr and Avi (well, universe-3 Avi, but also universe-1 Avi in how he was so totally broken in ways that weren't at all obvious at first, omg). I adored Kyr and Mags and the way they are always circling around the question of, how CAN they relate to each other in a way that involves Kyr actually seeing Mags? I adored Kyr and Lisabel and I WANT super awkward dating post-canon FIC for them PLEASE THANKS. I absolutely adored Kyr and the Sparrows and how they maybe don't even like Kyr but they trust her in a fundamental kind of way because being a horrible jerk and being extraordinarily trustworthy are both parts of who she is (and the horrible jerk part can change! even if they don't know that part yet!)
(But also: Mags CAN do better than that, Avi is right! :P Mags needs to find himself a nice boy who is... not... Avi! Even if I loved reading about Avi, and even if Avi did make him Minas Tirith :P )
-But also in terms of fanfic, I am super predictable, I also want extremely-ethically-compromised Wisdom AI fanfic about, well, everything! The Wisdom is constantly going through futures where billions and trillions of beings die! It is probably rather insane at this point! but also about how the Wisdom kills itself but leaves a tiny almost-powerless almost-small-enough-to-be-nonsentient remnant behind which is like a baby!Wisdom that just wants to have fun, and the Wisdom itself knows it will be that way and is totally horrified by it, but it's better than everyone dying everywhere and also it wants to save a tiny piece of itself even if it's a tiny let's-have-fun part.
-But back to Kyr, gosh, she just -- okay, have another quote:
...and along with confidence bloomed an old familiar anger. Kyr had spent her whole life angry. It was deep inside her, the seed that Gaea had planted and nourished till it twined through everything she was: a righteous rage that said I am the hand of vengeance. She had been born into a universe gone wrong. She had waited her whole life to come face-to-face with something she could blame.
And here he was.
But he didn't matter.
"Yiso?" she said.
And agh, the way that, even when face-to-face with what could be vengeance, she lets go of it, she lets go of blame even when she would have been absolutely correct not to, instead she turns towards the one who at the beginning of the book was the Other, who at the beginning was the Other whom she could blame and look to for revenge, and turns it into saving the Other instead (and yes, Kyr & Yiso is a deeply meaningful relationship to me, I love it) -- this is the true journey of the book. All the alternate universes and godlike AI and time jumping are just -- subsidiary to this.
no subject
Date: 2023-06-20 06:24 am (UTC)I got a totally different impression from both of you, though yours is closer to what I think makes sense.
What I'm thinking is that The Wisdom is a computer. Yes, a super brilliant sapient computer, but nevertheless - a computer. Computers can think really really fast, which makes them great at playing chess and all, but they can't think infinitely fast, no more than humans can.
The Wisdom had been damaged. Yes, it also wanted to fake its own death, but the damage at that point was real. It needed to make a new reality really fast and haul everybody into it. It didn't have time to run through all the scenarios, or even most of the scenarios. It clearly didn't think that the Dead Earth plot was the best one - look at its resentful conversation with Kyr where it insisted she understand that she was the one who decided and acted. It's just the only alternate reality it already had queued up, and also the only one where Kyr would understand the rules of. And it clearly need Kyr to be able to hit the ground running.
Given enough time it could've come up with another reality, with +1 earth but -1 megalomaniac cult leaders with superweapons. It just didn't have that time.
no subject
Date: 2023-06-21 05:14 pm (UTC)The Wisdom had been damaged. Yes, it also wanted to fake its own death, but the damage at that point was real.
Heh, I suppose it could very well be accused of faking its own death, but I'm not sure I would characterize it that way, when it ends up as something so much less than it was before. (Maybe happier and more free, but definitely less.)
It clearly didn't think that the Dead Earth plot was the best one - look at its resentful conversation with Kyr where it insisted she understand that she was the one who decided and acted.
Huh! I didn't get that from that discussion (not that it wasn't there, just that I didn't personally get that) -- I mostly got the sense that the Wisdom didn't want the heavy responsibility of deciding itself. But, like you say, going into Universe 3 it kind of had to decide, and quickly. (Which is something I think is interesting in terms of the Wisdom's development!)
no subject
Date: 2023-06-20 03:16 pm (UTC)I did really like the way "how do you change the way you think" was shown with Kyr. It's funny, until you mentioned the personal angle (what we thought in the 80s), I actually hadn't thought to connect it to my personal experiences, but actually, yeah -- I think maybe one of the reasons I appreciated the book as much as I did is that immigration is kind of an AU experience, isn't it? You come to a place where norms and beliefs and customs are different and are just plunked in the middle of it with no-one around you realizing that anything is different from the way it could be. (Or at least immigration pre-internet and international travel being common.) I'm actually going to have to think about whether this is one of the reasons AUs in general appeal to me as much as they do, hm! But anyway, as far as SDG, I did think Kyr's development along those lines was really well done. And that quote about present company not being excepted, yeah, ouch, because it's so true.
but my primary association was Ender's Game and gosh this book is really very much in dialogue with it even while it's nothing like it at all
That was my sense, too.
-I totally got taken in by the premise of ~militaristic space vengeance base~ and did not realize at all it was actually SAD LOSER ENCLAVE, lol forever
I was, too! And I do think Ender's Game is part of it, and also Tesh wrote some really good propaganda quotes, but also, given that Earth was destroyed, I do think militaristic space vengeance is a totally plausible and not, in fact, an unreasonable position. (I think the fact that there doesn't seem to be a faction of humanity who are not a creepy cult of child soldiers but who do want vengeance on the majoda for committing genocide a mere generation ago contributes to my feeling like the narrative endorses the destruction of Earth as the lesser evil. I mean, those people may well exist out there -- I realize we're getting a very narrow view through Kyr's POV and a couple of documents. But the composite picture I'm getting is frustrating in that regard...)
I really adored the subtle nods to the problems with AI and how AI is trained, and with the kinds of deep learning techniques we have where we don't necessarily understand how AI comes up with its answers, and with how dependent AI is on its training set, and how you could have this omniscient-seeming AI being who, because of its training set on alien data as the dominant paradigm, totally thinks that killing Earth is A-OK "for the greater good" (and how does it set the metric of "the greater good"? HMM) as it does in Version 3 --
I really like this interpretation of the Wisdom's actions -- that makes sense to me! I hope that's what Tesh meant! (or even the simpler explanation that the Wisdom was like, OK, the timeline where Earth was destroyed was a local minimum of badness, close enough, let's go back there.) I was cool with all that! The " it seemed like the narrative thought that killing Earth in Version 3 was A-OK and that's really weird??" part for me came in when no-one had any negative reaction to it even when Kyr got the opportunity to confront the Wisdom about it. And then the book ends and nobody gets a chance to confront the Wisdom about it either, or talk through it in any way.
But my friend who also read and loved the book was not bothered by this either, and IIRC wrote it off as alien AI being alien AI. So being bothered by this is not universal, although it was gratifying to see that many people did have the same problem with it that I did.
Anyway, I do hope fic gets written exploring the Wisdom's actions and maybe giving this whole resolution more of the scaffolding that I feel is (objectively) missing from the book.
I ADORED Kyr and Cleo. (Yes please ALL the platonic queer relationships! I am SO there for that!) I adored Kyr and Avi (well, universe-3 Avi, but also universe-1 Avi in how he was so totally broken in ways that weren't at all obvious at first, omg)
Yes to both of these! I saw some reviews that were annoyed that Kyr/Cleo wasn't the canonical relationship or maybe that Kyr/Lisabel wasn't more interesting, but I thought it was really cool to have Kyr both have a canonical female love interest AND have a vivid, interesting relationship with other queer people that wasn't a romantic relationship.
Kyr and the Sparrows and how they maybe don't even like Kyr but they trust her in a fundamental kind of way because being a horrible jerk and being extraordinarily trustworthy are both parts of who she is (But also: Mags CAN do better than that, Avi is right! :P Mags needs to find himself a nice boy who is... not... Avi! Even if I loved reading about Avi, and even if Avi did make him Minas Tirith :P )
Mags can and totally should do better, and I say this as someone who enjoyed Avi the most out of this entire book :P
he turns towards the one who at the beginning of the book was the Other, who at the beginning was the Other who she could blame and look to for revenge, and turns it into saving the Other instead (and yes, Kyr & Yiso is a deeply meaningful relationship to me, I love it) -- this is the true journey of the book.
Nod. The thing I really appreciated with Kyr's development, how coherent it is, is that she starts out with this extremely narrow view of who is "people" -- just the humans on Gaea and only the ones who both embrace and live up to the ideals of Gaea -- and then that view expands through meeting Yiso and humans living elsewhere and inhabiting the AUs and learning from those experiences -- and the thing about Kyr is that once she learns that majo or the "traitors and collaborators" are people, she can't unsee it, and feels a sense of duty to all of them like she did to the Sparrows and Gaea at the beginning. It's a really cool throughline!
no subject
Date: 2023-06-21 05:29 pm (UTC)haha, I think that's great! :D
I think maybe one of the reasons I appreciated the book as much as I did is that immigration is kind of an AU experience, isn't it? You come to a place where norms and beliefs and customs are different and are just plunked in the middle of it with no-one around you realizing that anything is different from the way it could be. (Or at least immigration pre-internet and international travel being common.)
Ohhhh, this is really interesting. I'm not an immigrant myself, but my parents are, and I've often thought about how hard it must have been for them, not just when they first came, but years afterwards, especially given that they raised their kids in the new culture. And yeah, now that you say that, it does seem like it must be a bit of an AU-like experience.
(I think the fact that there doesn't seem to be a faction of humanity who are not a creepy cult of child soldiers but who do want vengeance on the majoda for committing genocide a mere generation ago contributes to my feeling like the narrative endorses the destruction of Earth as the lesser evil. I mean, those people may well exist out there -- I realize we're getting a very narrow view through Kyr's POV and a couple of documents. But the composite picture I'm getting is frustrating in that regard...)
Oh, yeah, that's a good point which I hadn't thought about! Though I can imagine that over time those who are angry become more angry and get sucked into the creepy cult void, and those who aren't, get on with life... Like Admiral Russell and Lin, who seemed like they were pretty reasonable people actually, but who somehow were part of the cult anyway. (It's hard for me not to think that Tesh is making a point here about... well, let's just say that I know a few white older people who flirt with that line of becoming angrier and angrier and supporting some really sketchy things. So far I feel like they haven't totally crossed that line, and they've kept their anger in check enough, but it's a line that I can see exists.)
The " it seemed like the narrative thought that killing Earth in Version 3 was A-OK and that's really weird??" part for me came in when no-one had any negative reaction to it even when Kyr got the opportunity to confront the Wisdom about it.
Do you mean at the very end? I thought that it was clear that the Wisdom had no power to change things (which is what
But my friend who also read and loved the book was not bothered by this either, and IIRC wrote it off as alien AI being alien AI. So being bothered by this is not universal, although it was gratifying to see that many people did have the same problem with it that I did.
Lol! I am also gratified by your friend having the same opinion as me ;)
and maybe giving this whole resolution more of the scaffolding that I feel is (objectively) missing from the book.
Yes! We can all agree on that :D I feel like all of this could have been solved relatively easily by just a little more scaffolding being provided. (In general I think that might be a weakness of Tesh's writing -- I also felt like there was this thread of racial supremacy in Gaea that she was alluding to but which she never quite scaffolded enough for me to understand where that arc was going, if indeed it was going anywhere.)
and the thing about Kyr is that once she learns that majo or the "traitors and collaborators" are people, she can't unsee it, and feels a sense of duty to all of them like she did to the Sparrows and Gaea at the beginning.
Yes! I love the way you put this.
no subject
Date: 2023-06-22 05:45 am (UTC)It's my favorite kind of book reaction! :D
Though I can imagine that over time those who are angry become more angry and get sucked into the creepy cult void, and those who aren't, get on with life... Like Admiral Russell and Lin, who seemed like they were pretty reasonable people actually, but who somehow were part of the cult anyway.
that's a good point... and yeah, I can see Tesh making it deliberately, come to think of it. But also, like. If ever there was a legitimate grievance and reason for anger, you know?
And a good point about Lin and Admiral Russell, too, although one of the things I kind of wanted a better understanding of and didn't get was how people like Lin and Admiral Russell ended up letting Jole turn Gaea into that. Like, I absolutely think Tesh is making a deliberate point there that people who are not themselves monsters can help enable a monstrous system if they are complacent and indiscriminate about their bedfellows; I have no trouble believing that in the abstract. But I loved Lin a lot as a character, and Admiral Russell has such an interesting backstory, I wanted to know more how the two of them specifically ended up in that position, and the woman who was in charge of the Nursery. (That's not a flaw of the book, which was already doing a lot, but I wanted more along those specific lines.)
Do you mean at the very end? I thought that it was clear that the Wisdom had no power to change things
I do mean right at the end, and I agree with you that the Wisdom didn't have the power to change anything at that point, but it's weird to me that Kyr wouldn't demand that it try, or be angry at it about the choice it made, or at least have SOME kind of emotion about the choice it made when confronted with the entity that made the choice.
Upon further reflection on your "training data" read of the Wisdom issue, it occurs to me that what would've been really cool would be for Kyr and Avi (and maybe the Wisdom yacht and/or Yiso) to actually have the conversation about training data influencing the Wisdom's own choices, and maybe even some parallels there to how Gaea warped their own thinking -- the way the children of Gaea, with their circumscribed experiences, are also victims of a narrow training set. (Not a connection that had occurred to me before you mentioned that as an issue for the Wisdom, but now I think that's a really cool parallel, whether intended or not.)
Well, maybe I can request that for Yuletide XD
But in general on this issue, I guess I agree with Rachel that there are so many, not all that difficult, ways to fix this problem of the destruction of Earth just being quietly accepted, that the fact that Tesh didn't do any of them makes it feel like maybe the narrative IS just OK with that outcome.
I also felt like there was this thread of racial supremacy in Gaea that she was alluding to but which she never quite scaffolded enough for me to understand where that arc was going, if indeed it was going anywhere.)
Yeah, I thought that part was kind of pasted on and didn't go anywhere either, and also noted it as a weakness.
no subject
Date: 2023-06-24 05:43 am (UTC)Yeah, that was definitely a journey that got elided. A little more scaffolding for that as well would have certainly been nice -- it's believable that nice people could have gotten caught up in Jole's charisma and/or corrupted and/or in a gradual-frog-boiling position, but there wasn't any real indication of how this happened. (I actually do think this is a flaw -- like, I'm not asking for a whole flashback or anything, just a few sentences of what the characters themselves think about what happened.)
Upon further reflection on your "training data" read of the Wisdom issue, it occurs to me that what would've been really cool would be for Kyr and Avi (and maybe the Wisdom yacht and/or Yiso) to actually have the conversation about training data influencing the Wisdom's own choices, and maybe even some parallels there to how Gaea warped their own thinking -- the way the children of Gaea, with their circumscribed experiences, are also victims of a narrow training set. (Not a connection that had occurred to me before you mentioned that as an issue for the Wisdom, but now I think that's a really cool parallel, whether intended or not.)
Ohhhhh I hadn't thought about that, that is indeed really cool!
But in general on this issue, I guess I agree with Rachel that there are so many, not all that difficult, ways to fix this problem of the destruction of Earth just being quietly accepted, that the fact that Tesh didn't do any of them makes it feel like maybe the narrative IS just OK with that outcome.
I mean, I'm obviously primed to give Tesh the benefit of the doubt in general, but I also feel like she just sometimes isn't good with scaffolding stuff (see... the rest of our comments here!) -- I'd be totally willing to believe that the justification was in her head and thus in Kyr's too, but never made it down to the page. (Actually, idk if that's the benefit of the doubt? It's certainly not a great quality in a novel-writer... but it does seem like a more fixable problem than "destruction of Earth, cool!")
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Date: 2023-06-25 03:46 am (UTC)I would have really liked to see that, yeah.
I'd be totally willing to believe that the justification was in her head and thus in Kyr's too, but never made it down to the page. (Actually, idk if that's the benefit of the doubt? It's certainly not a great quality in a novel-writer... but it does seem like a more fixable problem than "destruction of Earth, cool!")
Heh, I know what you mean. But I guess if it is "the justification was in Tesh's head but she forgot to put it on the page", I would've expected an editor or an early reader to point that out and for it to be remedied before it went to print? Although possibly my ideas about what editors do these days are incorrect or outdated, because i would've expected an editor to make Arkady Martine take out about 70% of her italics, too, and yet :P
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Date: 2023-06-27 03:57 pm (UTC)LOLOLOL I laughed!
I do wonder about editors/betas, too. There are so many times I've read a book in the past few years where I've thought, "gosh, my beta would NEVER have let me get away with that!" I mean, I've got a great beta, but honestly I would have thought anyone would have made those italics go... :)
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Date: 2023-06-27 07:15 pm (UTC)Same!! I dunno, I guess fanfic made our standards too high? XP
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Date: 2023-06-29 03:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-06-22 12:05 am (UTC)You've read the whole Wilfred Owen poem the title comes from, right?
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Date: 2023-06-24 05:42 am (UTC)and yes! I love Wilfred Owen. Although, ha, even though I placed the title immediately, I mostly thought it would be Kyr seeing battle and realizing it was awful (that is, a more-or-less literal reading of the poem). Until you mentioned it I hadn't really thought about how the poem specifically calls out "the old Lie." Anyway, it's a great title!
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Date: 2023-06-26 02:18 am (UTC)I think I just took it for granted that despite visions of What Might Have Been, Earth was never saveable, but I suppose that substitutes narrative intuition for worldbuilding, which is a sin I don't usually commit. Writing off Earth, though, the point of view funnels down, but it also funnels up, in a way that reminded me of the Scholomance. Kyr goes from "get me out of here" to "get me and my friends out of here" to "we're saving everyone, even the assholes". I do think Lisabel is more than a damsel in distress (not much more because of her limited screen time), and to some extent the people who think Kyr/Cleo ought to have been canon might have bought into a bit of that subliminal Gaian morality.
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Date: 2023-06-27 04:15 pm (UTC)Yes! And it's not a choice that usually gets made, and certainly not the choice I was expecting, and I loved that.
and the adult officers get a chance to show what they're made of, for good or ill. If I were going to request fic, I'd ask for them, actually.
Oh, yes, absolutely! Their story sounds fascinating, really -- how did they get caught up in Gaea, what were they thinking as Gaea went on, what do they do afterwards? Heh, it may be a sign of how much I loved the teenage characters that I wasn't thinking as hard about that -- in the Scholomance, I ended the trilogy thinking it was absolutely the adult characters (Olivia Rhys-Lake and Li Shanfeng) that I wanted to hear more about.
It did seem very much like the Wisdom is not wise at all. That's the one thing it doesn't do; it optimizes an objective that someone else gives it, and mostly doesn't have real values of its own, except for perhaps very basic and stupid ones.
I don't know that I'd say it doesn't have real values of its own? But if it does, it definitely does not want to commit to them -- it's certainly always trying to get someone else to decide for it, when it can. I did think that this was maybe a consequence of being able to see all these different futures and not necessarily having a single true metric, and possibly even being programmed to seek organic sapient input into the values system.
but it also funnels up, in a way that reminded me of the Scholomance. Kyr goes from "get me out of here" to "get me and my friends out of here" to "we're saving everyone, even the assholes".
YES! I loved this. I did also think about this while I was reading it, and even thought about the Scholomance as well -- I really love that we're getting these kinds of books, where the emphasis is that look, we have to try to save everyone, not just ourselves, not just ourselves and our friends, and also with the emphasis on growing that kind of empathy to encompass everyone. It's a large part of why I love the Scholomance books so much as well.
I do think Lisabel is more than a damsel in distress (not much more because of her limited screen time),
I actually thought that, especially given how little screen time she had (which I'm totally cool with because I adore that the primary relationships are not romantic), Lisabel worked really well with the construction of the novel, with the alternate universes -- first I wrote off Lisabel as a damsel in distress (as does Kyr in Universe #1), but then Universe #2 made it clear she really was her own person, and then that primed us to see her in Universe #3 as a whole person.
and to some extent the people who think Kyr/Cleo ought to have been canon might have bought into a bit of that subliminal Gaian morality.
Heh. I love this comment.
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Date: 2023-06-27 07:19 pm (UTC)Oh that's a really interesting point! I actually read this book and The Golden Enclaves relatively close to each other but failed to pick up on this commonality, but you're absolutely right!
And while I'm commenting already, YES to Avi being many different kinds of a little shit across the multiverse being an unexpected feature of this book that I liked very much.
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Date: 2023-06-25 01:04 am (UTC)The Battlestar Galactica 2004 reboot is probably somewhere in the soup - I mean, the mix - as well.
...the Wisdom kills itself but leaves a tiny almost-powerless almost-small-enough-to-be-nonsentient remnant behind which is like a baby!Wisdom...
Very tongue-in-cheek: Wisdom as Groot?
There's some serious YA vibes, so I'm just realizing, in that context, that Kyr's most important relationships might be the nonromantic ones. Yes she figures out she'd hit on Lisabel like a storm door in a thunderstorm, but that's a step in her journey toward empathy. Kyr's ride-or-die relationships are Mags, Cleo, and by the end of the novel, maybe Yiso.
I'm interested in your thoughts about the downscaling of the resolution focus. It feels to me like there's two pieces there: the "what about not destroying Earth" that has been discussed much, and possibly could have been handwaved with a paragraph or two of exposition or discussion; and "what about Majoda space losing the Majo, with a side of Gaea trying to cut a swath through Majoda space." The latter... I think there's an editorial pass missing, where Kyr figures that she can get "her" (ever expanding list of) Gaeans off Gaea Station, sorting out the new and startling implosion of Majoda space follows. Yes, shades of Bujold there.
Overall, I think this is an editing pass or two from hitting all my buttons to being really good.
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Date: 2023-06-27 03:53 pm (UTC)Though now I am pondering who Emily "rubbish men and the men who love them" Tesh would ship in that canon.
Ha, what are the ME ships?
There's some serious YA vibes, so I'm just realizing, in that context, that Kyr's most important relationships might be the nonromantic ones.
Heh, yes. In YA I'm very used to the important relationships being the romantic ones, so this was rather a breath of fresh air to me :)
Kyr's ride-or-die relationships are Mags, Cleo, and by the end of the novel, maybe Yiso.
Yes! And the Yiso relationship is really impressive growth for Kyr <3 (Which maybe she can do partially because she is a teenager -- would this work for any of the adults, even the "reasonable" ones? -- that would be something interesting to explore as well.)
"what about Majoda space losing the Majo, with a side of Gaea trying to cut a swath through Majoda space." The latter... I think there's an editorial pass missing, where Kyr figures that she can get "her" (ever expanding list of) Gaeans off Gaea Station, sorting out the new and startling implosion of Majoda space follows.
*nods* Yeah, this is what I was groping towards, except not quite able to articulate. It seems like there should be a significantly major impact on interspecies relations, not just related to Gaea, as you say. And yet somehow just getting the Gaeans off of Gaea Station becomes what the conflict is all about, as if everything will be solved if that happens, which seems, well, unlikely. I mean, as I mentioned above, I would have been happy with lampshading it with a single line going "okay, this is, uh, a really major interstellar political problem, but the part of it that we can fix is this part, so let us do this," but we don't get that line.
The "what about not destroying Earth" was actually not a piece for me while reading, because apparently I'd already headcanoned why that was, but I think you're right that it also does kind of fit into this framework of downscaling the resolution focus.
Overall, I think this is an editing pass or two from hitting all my buttons to being really good.
Oh, agreed! I mean, it really really hit all my buttons as it was, I love it madly, but I think another editing pass would have made it really good, as you say!
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Date: 2023-06-28 04:39 am (UTC)The issue of issue of AI training and its limitations was interesting to me as well. My AI-related experiences over the past couple of months have mostly been very annoying ones, thanks to the emergence of ChatGPT as a cheating tool in my classes. I’m not sure ChatGPT even deserves to be called an AI at this point—it’s all A and no I. But it’s really amazing at spitting out slick, confident stuff that very much sounds (at a surface level) as if it knows what it’s talking about. So I spent a fair bit of time trying to come up with exam problems for which a chatbot would be no help whatsoever. One of the things I did was to put some of my previous exam problems into ChatGPT, and then ask students to critique the results. When I tried asking ChatGPT itself to do this, it turned out that it is absolute crap at evaluating its own output. It would invariably either say something like, “Great job! No notes!” or just give the line about “As an AI language model, I am unable…” Now, obviously the Wisdom is supposed to be unimaginably more sophisticated than ChatGPT, but I see a little bit of an echo of this in the Wisdom’s disavowing responsibility for its actions, as when it insists that Kyr is the one who made the decision. If the Wisdom doesn’t have the capability to decide whether the outcome it created was right or wrong, who does? Who’s checking its work? And as I think someone mentioned in another comment, that makes a very pointed contrast with Kyr’s ability to criticize her own previous ideas and learn to think in a new way.
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Date: 2023-06-29 03:32 am (UTC)That's interesting about ChatGPT and your classes-- heh, I'd also noticed that ChatGPT sounds very confident that it knows what it's talking about (and is more-or-less correct for stuff where it's had a lot to train on, but gets things more and more wildly incorrect the more esoteric the question gets, while still sounding very confident and plausible). Ha, I like your exam question :)
I imagine that when the Wisdom was built, it was made in such a way that it's not supposed to be making decisions, for roughly the same reasons that you would never want ChatGPT in charge of making decisions! :D Although by asking Kyr to decide, that is making a decision, in a way... But yes, I like the contrast with Kyr and how she grows during the book, which I hadn't thought about before
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Date: 2023-07-03 04:57 pm (UTC)This is a really cool idea! I will have to pass it on to my husband and see if it might be of any use in his classes :)
But also, that is an interesting framework in which to think of the Wisdom!
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Date: 2023-07-04 04:38 am (UTC)It ended up being weirdly sort of fun to poke at ChatGPT and try to figure out what it can and cannot do. Some of the results were fairly hilarious (although probably much more so to me than to anyone else). I might write a post about it at some point.
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Date: 2023-07-05 04:57 am (UTC)Math :) including some programming-adjacent stuff for numerical analysis. (ChatGPT is apparently really good at answering the simpler kinds of problems, but is out of its depth after a while -- at least so far.)
I might write a post about it at some point.
I would definitely be curious to read it if you do!
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Date: 2023-07-16 02:53 am (UTC)https://hidden-variable.dreamwidth.org/1285.html
(For some reason it's not showing up on my friends page (and therefore presumably not on yours!), I only noticed because I idly clicked on her DW.)
I LOVE your icon, btw. We have that book!
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Date: 2023-07-16 07:40 pm (UTC)(and hee, I love this icon and use it basically every chance I get -- we also have that book, although I think I saw this in icon form first. But it also feels especially like the kind of answer AI would come up with, so it felt like the perfect icon for chatGPT in academic context discussion :D)
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Date: 2023-07-16 10:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-06-28 05:42 pm (UTC)Yes, that was great! I loved how Kyr changes and grows while her essential qualities remain - that was really well-done.
I didn't mind the Wisdom behaving like an amoral AI, it was Kyr's lack of reaction to it that baffled/outraged me, and I think also made some readers think the narrative's POV was that genocide was OK after all. All I needed was Kyr to be angry/upset over the genocide now being probably unnecessarily but now irrevocably permanent rather than apparently not caring or even thinking about it, when the genocide was what had previously driven the entire story up until that point.
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Date: 2023-06-29 03:39 am (UTC)