23
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2025
23 points (100.0% liked)
TechTakes
2122 readers
408 users here now
Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.
For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Thanks for pointing me to this. I hadn't read the Wolfe story and I appreciated it. I skipped most of the gwern fluff, precisely because while his preferred interpretation is one possible of many, what I like about Wolfe is that the story can be about multiple things beside that.
And the illustration sucks.
Goddammit now I actually have to credit Gwern for something unambiguously positive in directing me to this story.
I found myself appreciating it a lot even just on a relatively surface level. I must confess to having no experience with Proust or some of the other references it makes, but it sent my mind back to my own time in school and struck me with a very particular kind of social vertigo, thinking about all the people I vaguely knew but haven't spoken to or about since we were classmates. Like, people talk about the feeling that everyone around you is a full person with their own inner life and all that, and it feels similar to think how many people, especially in childhood, live their lives almost parallel to ours, intersecting only in passing.
Also given how many rationalists seem utterly convinced that many of not most people are just NPCs who don't meaningfully exist when "off screen" I'm not surprised that they're excited to have this mess of an interpretation that sidesteps that whole concept.
Ed: Also, the illusion sucks.