the people who managed to get that don't decide to move on and think "hey, maybe other things i learned my whole life were wrong, too"
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that is very snow crash
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snow crash is barely even distorting anything for story purposes, our neal knows some shit
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Ehhhhhhhhhhhhh. He's got really bullshit evopsycho ideas and 90% of what he thinks he knows about linguistics is just wrong.
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yeah, the way the snow crash virus winds up working is, uh, heavily dramatized to say the least
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but he isn't wrong that the human capacity for language is first and foremost an enormous security vulnerability
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I mean, if you want a story about "language as a security vulnerability" Miéville did it way better. But he doesn't think it's the TRUTH.
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which Miéville? i promise i'm going to get the rest of the way through IRON COUNCIL, pinky swear
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I can't read his New Crobuzon setting stuff, i think it's awful, so if you get through Iron Council you've done better than me!
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it's a machine made of people that converts people into parts for itself; corporations are its nimbler, scrappier, even hungrier cousins
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so you can sort of think of existing social mechanisms as gods in a kind of chaos magic way?
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yup, from a pragmatism perspective. if people believe that Blorf prohibits wearing marshmallow fluff as a hat, and you wear marshmallow...
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...fluff for a hat and they beat you to death with sticks, how is this distinguishable from having suffered the wrath of Blorf?
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rather i contend that Blorf may be usefully considered as an organizational entity hosting itself in the Blorfites
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(definition fun: a god is semi-autonomous software that runs on multiple hosts, a demon is semi-autonomous software that runs on one host)
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but it's the same as how you can't see or touch The Coca-Cola Company, only its component cells, but it can sure as fuck murder you
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oh, and the reason i mention Sophocles is that if you do a close reading of Antigone, his usage of "the gods" is exactly "popular opinion"
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