A while back, I set myself the project of figuring out how much of the MIT undergrad physics curriculum could be taught from free online books. The answer, so far, is more than I had anticipated but much less than what we deserve. But working on that, along with a few other conversations, has got me to wondering. We’ve seen TESCREAL types be just plain wrong about science many times over the years. Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality botches Punnett squares and pretty much everything more advanced than that. LessWrong demonstrably has no filter against old-school math crankery. The (ahem) leading light of “effective accelerationism” just plays Mad Libs with physics words. Yudkowsky’s declarations about organic chemistry boggle the educated mind. They even manage to be weird about theoretical computer science — what we might call the “lambda calculus is super-Turing!” school of TESCREAL.

Sometimes, the difference between a TESCREAL understanding of science and a legitimate one comes from having studied the subject in a formal way. But not every aspiring autodidact with an interest in molecular biology or the theoretical limits of computation is a lost cause!

So, then: What books come down upon the superficial TESCREAL version of cool things like a ton of scientific bricks? What are the texts that one withdraws from an inside coat pocket and slides across the table, saying “This here is the good shit”?

  • V0ldek@awful.systemsEnglish
    15·
    8 months ago

    I like ‘Star Wars’ way better. I’m a capitalist. ‘Star Wars’ is the capitalist show. ‘Star Trek’ is the communist one. There is no money in ‘Star Trek’ because you just have the transporter machine that can make anything you need. The whole plot of ‘Star Wars’ starts with Han Solo having this debt that he owes and so the plot in ‘Star Wars’ is driven by money [~Peter Thiel]

    Your Honor, my client might’ve murdered mr. Thiel with a Lego model of a Star Destroyer, but as witnessed by Exhibit A he acted in good faith and as what can only be described as service to the community. We move for full acquittal.

    • Allpoints@mstdn.social
      5·
      8 months ago

      @V0ldek @BlueMonday1984 <sarcasm>I like ‘Blade Runner’ way better. I’m a capitalist. ‘Blade Runner’ is the capitalist movie. ‘Star Trek’ is the communist one. There is no money in ‘Star Trek’ because you just have the transporter machine that can make anything you need. The whole plot of ‘Blade Runner’ revolves around a perfect society run by oligarchs exploiting the masses</sarcasm>

      What is it about these Tech Bros that causes them to interpret dystopian warnings as a playbook?

        • zbyte64@awful.systemsEnglish
          2·
          8 months ago

          I wonder how the workers in Blade Runner justify the situation of replicants. There’s the guy who made the eyes of those machines, he didn’t seem to live the same comfy life as the guy living on top of the fucking pyramid. I guess he did his work because it was “interesting”. The other workers probably went along with it because the wars meant they got cheaper commodities or some other all too common justification.

          • gerikson@awful.systemsEnglish
            7·
            8 months ago

            It’s been a long time since I saw the movie, wasn’t the guy with the eyes in the vat in the beginning a black-market dealer that the replicants used to hide?

            OTOH “genius tinkerer who prefers to live in the slums” is a cyberpunk trope - maybe from this guy!

            Edit I love Bladerunner but the movie is 90% vibes, don’t expect it to be entirely consistent in how its economic system works.

            • Billy Smith@social.coop
              2·
              8 months ago

              @gerikson @zbyte64

              The guy with they eyes in his lab was just one of the specialist manufacturers.

              He was the person that put the replicants in touch with the “genius tinkerer”, who then gave the replicants access to Tyrell. :D