Philosophical interestingness ranking of sci-fi universes (in terms of meaningfulness, complexity, intelligibility...): 12. Star Wars 11. MCU 10. Doctor Who 9. Dune 8. Star Trek 7. Foundation 6. Deepness in the Sky 5. Hainish 4. Schismatrix 3. Rick & Morty 2. HHG 1. Culture
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I’ve only read 1 culture novel but it’s obviously the most philosophically interesting by a mile
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Pity so many famous writers didn’t bother to build proper universes. As in literally spanning space. PKD, Heinlein etc are a bunch of killer apps with no platform underneath. Le Guin squeaks through with a vagueworld universe.
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Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Duncan Paterson
Read the first volume. Didn’t strike me as philosophically interesting outside of a couple of points (dark forest theory, psychology of an unstable world) though the story is very imaginative.https://twitter.com/ethicallorax/status/1318054423717838849?s=21 …
Venkatesh Rao added,
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Futurama is a lot of fun but even I’ll admit it’s not philosophically interesting. It’s just fun. My list is correct and profound. If you disagree you are wrong and should feel bad.
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No accident that the top 3 have a strong element of humor and absurdity. Most universes do poorly on the philosophical interestingness test by not taking that element seriously enough.
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Some start out interesting but then go meh. Firefly universe was interesting until I saw the confederacy-apologia angle and couldn’t unsee it. Still interesting as a story but dull as philosophy.
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Hyperion was very interesting but in a very narrow way around the Shrike as a philosophical Rorschach test. I read only one volume. Wasn’t inspired to read the rest when the first one totally punted on actually resolving the Shrike plot
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Replying to @vgr
Haven’t heard of Schismatrix, what’s it’s standout feature..?
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