Also the Galactic Empire as an anti-scientific hellhole with secret police surveillance.
Witness good old Hari Seldon unveiling his plans on Trantor:
It was not a large office, but it was quite spy-proof and quite undetectably so. Spy-beams trained upon it received neither a suspicious silence nor an even more suspicious static. They received, rather, a conversation constructed at random out of a vast stock of innocuous phrases in various tones and voices.
[Seldon] put his fingers on a certain spot on his desk and a small section of the wall behind him slid aside. Only his own fingers could have done so, since only his particular print-pattern could have activated the scanner beneath.
[…]
“You will find several microfilms inside,” said Seldon. “Take the one marked with the letter T.”
Gaal did so and waited while Seldon fixed it within the projector and handed the young man a pair of eyepieces. Gaal adjusted them, and watched the film unroll before his eyes.
I would recommend “Consider Phlebas” by Iain Banks, which is part of the Culture series of novels. Very formative for me, and I read that while I was writing Theme Park. And I still think it’s the best depiction of a post-A.G.I. future, an optimistic post-A.G.I. future, where we’re traveling the stars and humanity reached its full flourishing.
The protagonist of Consider Phlebas is working for the Culture's enemies, a theocratic empire that has slaves literally bred for loyalty, and the conflict they're engaged in ultimately kills billions of sentient beings. Most of the thoughts about the Culture are his, and he basically decries them as the ultimate wokesters. No wonder HN nerds prefer The Player of Games in which a smart nerd like themselves get recruited as an agent to bring down an empire a bit like our own by being really really good at games.
The Myrdals are probably entirely discredited nowadays, both for being the quintessential social engineers and their son Jan happily destroying their legacy. As you'll no doubt have learned, fertility has fallen everywhere in the developed world, both in countries with shit welfare for parents (Italy) and quite good (the Nordics). Realistically, the only way to reverse this is to enable draconian abortion laws coupled with a systematic repression of sex ed and contraception. Of course this is congruent with today's fascists' goals...
I have 3 kids, 1 bio and 2 bonus, and man it's a lot of work. (youngest is technically an adult but de facto...)
I also feel there's insane pressure nowadays not just to have a kid but to have the perfect kid - great childhood, great education - and if you miss just one PTA meeting you're branded for life
The background is that the center-RIGHT gov of Sweden is gonna put up an investigation ("utredning") into why people aren't getting (the RIGHT kind of) kids. Nothing new there, simply the same culture war fretting already percolating in the anglosphere.
Finland already has an investigation ongoing, and the spokesperson there raises the point that one societal change that's happened in the last 25 years is... social media.
Wouldn't it be delicious if it could be proved that Facebook and Twitter and Tiktok are the reasons people don't get into relationships and have kids? Eat that, Elon!
LW was pushing this book hard - multiple posts by Habryka, custom color scheme on the front page. Granted, it's perfectly in line with the site's "mission" but several people commented on it.
In the meantime, I hope Nate finds happiness as an author b/c he doesn't seem to find it by trying to use DOOM as a pretext to get laid:
Maybe instead of worrying about obscure wiki pages, Habryka should reflect why a linkpost titled Racial Dating Preferences and Sexual Racism is on the front page of his precious community now, with 48 karma and 22 comments.
(I'm in vacation mode and forgot it was late on Sunday)
I wonder if Habryka, the LWer who posted both there and on Xhitter that "someone should do something about this troublesome page" realized that there would be less pushback if he'd simply coordinated in the background and got the edits in place without forewarning others. Was it intentional to try to pick a fight with Wikipedians?
gerikson @ gerikson @awful.systems Posts 44Comments 1,296Joined 2 yr. ago
Also the Galactic Empire as an anti-scientific hellhole with secret police surveillance.
Witness good old Hari Seldon unveiling his plans on Trantor: