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: 2023-07-03 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!
no subject
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.
no subject
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!
no subject
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!
no subject
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)
no subject
Date: 2023-07-16 10:53 pm (UTC)