29 NOV 2025 by ideonexus
Interactive Fiction, Like Riddles, Lack Replay Value
Infocom's interactive fiction, like most interactive fiction, is generally held by players to not have replay value in the usual sense, much as one cannot simply "replay" a riddle to which one knows the answer (although one can pose it to another, think about it again once the answer has been forgotten, or appreciate it in new ways with knowledge of the solution). Critics have noted that "once this kind of finite interactive fiction has been mastered, it generally ceases to hold the reader's ... 1 
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notes05 OCT 2025 by ideonexus
Locke Rejected Innate Ideas as a Defense of Arbitrary Aut...
The first target against which he directed his criticism was the doctrine of innate ideas. Since Locke s position was that all knowledge is derived ultimately from experience, it was altogether natural that he should repudiate this Platonic doctrine; but there was another reason for his determination to discredit it. The doctrine of innate ideas had become a weapon for the defense of arbitrary authority, of superstition, and of ridiculous theories. Men in authority argued that their actions w... 1 notes
notes20 SEP 2025 by ideonexus
Written Word Enabled Philosophy, Screen Content Unravels It
The classicist Eric Havelock argued that the arrival of literacy in ancient Greece was the catalyst for the birth of philosophy. Once people had a means of pinning ideas down on the page to interrogate them, refine them and build on them, a whole new revolutionary way of analytic and abstract thinking was born — one that would go on to shape our entire civilisation3. With the birth of writing received ways of thinking could be challenged and improved. This was our species’ cognitive liber...
1 While I find this essay goes a bit into alarmism in places, I do appreciate how it communicates the importance of long-form reading in the intellectual and social advancement of civilization. I appreciate the idea that the written word is a cognitive prosthesis that can enhance our intellectual capabilities beyond what was capable during the era of oral traditions. Screens have demonstrated the same potential, but the flood of highly addictive screen-content junk-food seems so much more destructive than the pulp novels of the past.
01 JAN 2025 by ideonexus
ChatGPT is a bullshit machine
The idea of ChatGPT as a bullshit machine is a helpful one when combined with the distinction between hard and soft bullshit. Reaching again for the example of the dodgy student paper: we’ve all, I take it, marked papers where it was obvious that a dictionary or thesaurus had been deployed with a crushing lack of subtlety; where fifty-dollar words are used not because they’re the best choice, nor even because they serve to obfuscate the truth, but simply because the author wants to convey... 1 notes
notes25 JAN 2024 by ideonexus
Forgotten Best Sellers
Social values ebb and flow over decades, but the values expressed in a book are fixed. It may be that science fiction is more affected by values dissonance than other genres by nature of being (often) set in the future. A book written and set in the 1950s might have quaint expectations regarding the proper roles of men and women (not to mention the assumption that those are only two choices), but they would be the quaint expectations of the era in which the book is set. A novel written in the...Folksonomies: popculture
Folksonomies: popculture
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notes31 OCT 2018 by ideonexus
Insights on Being Well-Read
What is the true point of a bookish life? Note I write “point,” not “goal.” The bookish life can have no goal: It is all means and no end. The point, I should say, is not to become immensely knowledgeable or clever, and certainly not to become learned. Montaigne, who more than five centuries ago established the modern essay, grasped the point when he wrote, “I may be a man of fairly wide reading, but I retain nothing.” Retention of everything one reads, along with being mentally i... 1 notes
notes06 JAN 2018 by ideonexus
The Case Against Reading Too Broadly
The real problem with telling young writers to fan out across genres and forms is that it doesn’t help them find a voice. If anything, it’s antivoice. Learning the craft of writing isn’t about hopping texts like hyperlinks. It’s about devotion and obsession. It’s about lingering too long in some beloved book’s language, about steeping yourself in someone else’s style until your consciousness changes colour. It’s Tolkien phases and Plath crushes. It’s going embarrassingly, un... 1 notes
notes05 JUN 2017 by ideonexus
Be Prolific
For example, Simonton cites the work of inventor Thomas Edison who accumulated a mind-boggling 2,300 patents over his lifetime.
He found that in the same year Edison applied for patents for the light bulb and the telephone (certainly both hits) he also filed for patents for 100 or so other inventions including the pneumatic pen (a partial miss), a talking doll (a definite miss) and a ghost detection machine (enough said).
In all likelihood, Edison never knowingly worked on something he thou... 1 notes
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