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Bakker XLIII - the prattle of unnumbered years


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On 21/03/2016 at 5:50 PM, Sci-2 said:

Great stuff Solo!

I come with a much more pedantic offering - some discussion with Chomsky on universal grammar.

=-=-=

 

Clearly our brains have to be wired for language but it's not like our brains have a construct for words that are placed. I've just been watching and reading some of David Eagleman's work and his argument is that the brain is incredibly good at sorting out information that helps run it's model of the outside world. What we "see" or "experience" is just an illusion that allows us to function. There were some experiments showing how people can recieve electrical shocks in their tongue and use it for sensing direction. Another experiment showed how a person can "hear" or "read" by receiving taps along his back in certain combinations. They even have mice that can "see" infrared and respond to IR sources even though they never see it with their eyes (but via an electrical signal from a sensor attached to their head). I think we essentially use different forms of pattern recognition and then add it into our reality. Much like the fact we never read words/sentences the way we do while learning reading just becomes a thing. I'm pretty sure the "book experience" is our brain conjuring up a semi-reality that makes sense of our understanding of narrative.

The weird thing with reading and watching a few of these brain based shows/books (downloading brains seems to be a popular thing in the UK at the moment) I can see Bakker got so excited about things he discusses in neuropath. The problem is that the actual science and examples are more fascinating and disturbing than his story based on them.

I've just started reading Peter Watts' "Blindsight" and he also seems to be having fun with some concepts on consciousness and heaven that puts me in mind of Bakker. Watts is also canadian - I wonder if they know each other (I mean Canada isn't that big :P)

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13 hours ago, red snow said:

I've just started reading Peter Watts' "Blindsight" and he also seems to be having fun with some concepts on consciousness and heaven that puts me in mind of Bakker. Watts is also canadian - I wonder if they know each other (I mean Canada isn't that big :P)

Yeah, they know each other and I would dare to say they are friends.  Scott has mentioned Peter numerous times on his blog and has, at times, mentioned having dinner at his house.

 

12 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

I hear Watts mentioned a lot as being similar to Bakker. I need to track some of that down.

Blightsight is actually legally available free online: here.

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1 hour ago, .H. said:

Yeah, they know each other and I would dare to say they are friends.  Scott has mentioned Peter numerous times on his blog and has, at times, mentioned having dinner at his house.

 

Blightsight is actually legally available free online: here.

Canada is small afterall!

That actually makes a lot of sense based on content and themes. It's too soon for me to know whether Watts is in a similar league but he certainly seems to be using SF (as opposed to Fantasy) to explore some interesting concepts about the mind and "heaven".

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18 minutes ago, red snow said:

Canada is small afterall!

That actually makes a lot of sense based on content and themes. It's too soon for me to know whether Watts is in a similar league but he certainly seems to be using SF (as opposed to Fantasy) to explore some interesting concepts about the mind and "heaven".

Well, anything is small if you compare it to the right thing, ;)

I recalled it because Scott's blog was actually where I saw that Blightsight was available free online, so a small search showed he had mentioned him other time.  Honestly, I need to reread it though, because I think I read it too fast and so I really don't remember half the details.  It's good though and well-worth reading, my shit memory aside.

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7 hours ago, .H. said:

Well, anything is small if you compare it to the right thing, ;)

I recalled it because Scott's blog was actually where I saw that Blightsight was available free online, so a small search showed he had mentioned him other time.  Honestly, I need to reread it though, because I think I read it too fast and so I really don't remember half the details.  It's good though and well-worth reading, my shit memory aside.

Yeah I'm warming to it quite a bit. It's a bit like Richard Morgan but with Bakker debating thrown in. Richard also big upped Watts in his blog so he seems to be an author other authors like. Within the realms of genre authors i respect anyhow.

I just read a funny scene where the character tells the story of creation via the lens of egg and sperm. It backfires badly on the character and I couldn't help think "this is like something Bakker would say and own and receive a similar backlash" :)

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Ah I just mentioned Chomsky because the whole innate capacity for language seems to be how sorcery works - even the Psukhe which, near as I can tell, doesn't have Cants.

My guess is that in our reality Bakker would say language acquisition is biology, while in the Bakkerverse it's "miraculous" as Chomsky put it.

Does this suggest that the Bakkerverse was created via the "Logos", that "In the Beginning was the Word"? Is innate capacity for language a quality of ensouled beings, something only simulated by the creations of the Tekne? 

I just wonder how hard it is to make a skin-spy with a "soul"? If something can comprehend language, can utilize some reasoning skills...why can't it understand paradox? 

And if a skinspy can understand paradox, is that enough to be a sorcerer? We assume that a "soul" - whatever that is - must be there for a magic user, but maybe it's not that hard after all?

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Well was the skin spy made to have a soul? Or, just somewhere along the way it obtained a soul somehow? For some reason, I lean towards latter. Wether naturally, or by Moe doing his chorae trick on him. 

Just finished TJE reread, and there is a lot going on with Mimara and her chorae. Is her chorae special in some way? I dunno. I did catch where her and Akka both remark that she (Mimara) is what happened in Cil-Aujus. I wish she could have looked at the Captain's chorae also with the JE, so we would know if something is special about hers. 

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On 3/30/2016 at 5:15 AM, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

Well was the skin spy made to have a soul? Or, just somewhere along the way it obtained a soul somehow? For some reason, I lean towards latter. Wether naturally, or by Moe doing his chorae trick on him. 

Just finished TJE reread, and there is a lot going on with Mimara and her chorae. Is her chorae special in some way? I dunno. I did catch where her and Akka both remark that she (Mimara) is what happened in Cil-Aujus. I wish she could have looked at the Captain's chorae also with the JE, so we would know if something is special about hers. 

What I'm thinking is that having a "soul" means bridging the gap between the mundane/material and the arcane/Outside.

We - or at least I - initially assumed that the God had something to do with souls, or at the least there was something about Earwa as an enchanted world that would prevent the Tekne from deliberately producing a soul...but at the same time it's at least a respectable guess that there is a way to take empirical reductionism and get to the Outside in the Bakkerverse b/c the Inverse Fire seems to be that very triumph of technology-as-applied-science.

So maybe what seems like an insurmountable challenge is really just finding the right mutation, the right genetic code that produces the correct type of physical being. Yet at the same time it would also suggest one of two things:

1. The Consult not only has no idea how to reproduce an ensouled skin-spy, they have no means of successfully reverse engineering the process. As such all they can do is utilize their one lucky dice throw as a spy into the Mandate.

2. The Consult managed to reproduce at least two ensouled skin-spies, but only kept one around to reverse engineer. This assumed sorcerer skin-spy kept in Golgotterath is the key to unlocking either the No-God, a sorcerer army that will butcher the Great Ordeal, or both.

Anyway all a bunch of speculation...here's more from Chomsky on language:

Noam Chomsky on the unsolved mysteries of language and the brain
 

 

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On 3/23/2016 at 7:00 PM, Darth Richard II said:

I hear Watts mentioned a lot as being similar to Bakker. I need to track some of that down.

I think you would like him. Just don't expect to see him in person because the USA has banned him from entering. 

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Hey guys,

Scott has been quite unresponsive for the last few months, so I have no idea what's going on. Hopefully it doesn't mean additional delays for the book. Usually, Scott sends me a file of the last copy edit as an early read. But I have yet to see said file and I should have received it by now. Unless splitting the novel in two is screwing up the editing more than they expected.

Tried contacting the folks at Overlook to see what's going on. Will keep you posted if they get back to me. . .

Cheers,

Patrick

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Hey guys! Been a long time since I've posted, but I have been really confused about the Bakker information I've seen elsewhere and figured y'all would know what's going on. 

 

1. What is the "Knife of Many Hands"? Is that another short story? 

2. What is happening with the split release? Originally I was seeing Book 3 of the Aspect Emperor trilogy, titled The Unholy Consult, coming out in July, but now I'm seeing preorders open for The Great Ordeal, also book 3 of the Aspect Emperor trilogy. There also doesn't appear to be an ebook version available to preorder anywhere. So what is the deal?

 

Sorry for the questions that I know you've either probably answered a million times ... unless you are also wanting the answers :-)

 

I would also ask if there have been any major insights into anything in the past two years or so but that might be a bit too involved for one post...

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1 hour ago, WrathOfTinyKittens said:

Hey guys! Been a long time since I've posted, but I have been really confused about the Bakker information I've seen elsewhere and figured y'all would know what's going on. 

 

1. What is the "Knife of Many Hands"? Is that another short story? 

2. What is happening with the split release? Originally I was seeing Book 3 of the Aspect Emperor trilogy, titled The Unholy Consult, coming out in July, but now I'm seeing preorders open for The Great Ordeal, also book 3 of the Aspect Emperor trilogy. There also doesn't appear to be an ebook version available to preorder anywhere. So what is the deal?

 

Sorry for the questions that I know you've either probably answered a million times ... unless you are also wanting the answers :-)

 

I would also ask if there have been any major insights into anything in the past two years or so but that might be a bit too involved for one post...

The only major insight is that nerdanel was right all along.

and apparently Derrida and Plato both wrote extensively about chorae and topos and there's a very decent chance those writings are as deeply embedded in the underlying principles / metaphysics of earwa as much as platos "the cave" is deeply embedded in kellhus' arc.

unfortunately the book has been split in two, I think they are plying us because it is fun to them. Like deathly hollows part I and part 2 it's a money grab, it also means they can publish a follow up to the thousandfold thought little encyclopedia at the end of the second volume. 

the first volume is called the great ordeal, and the second volume is called the unholy consult.

no one knows if there will be a simultaneous ebook or not, I think it took a few months for white luck warrior to get an ebook, but five years ago the ebook market was rather different, maybe they put in more effort now?

the knife of many hands is a short story published in two parts in consecutive issues of grim dark magazine. It features a "Two hearted" gladiator; he is a barbarian/philosopher and encounters the scarlet spires a few hundred years before the events of book one.

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18 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Eh? Is that because of the flesh eating virus thing?

Nah, US border Patrol agent did not like the cut of his jib when he tried to cross once. He was accused of assaulting the agent and deported back here.

 

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Quote

unfortunately the book has been split in two, I think they are plying us because it is fun to them. Like deathly hollows part I and part 2 it's a money grab, it also means they can publish a follow up to the thousandfold thought little encyclopedia at the end of the second volume. 

Yes and no. Apparently the combined word count of the book is about 300,000 words (around the same length as A Game of Thrones) but the massive glossary takes it up a lot more. For a larger publisher releasing a new volume in a bestselling series, that would be fine. For a small publisher like Overlook releasing a book in a modest-selling series, it's much more of a risk which they mitigate by splitting the book in half. The other option on the table was not to include the appendix, but Bakker was apparently keen on it getting in there.

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