Briefly and basically: does a holothete experience reality or a very realistic simulation? Sometimes it seems to be one, sometimes the other.
Joelle, the holothete, thinks:
"I will touch the Absolute, I will be in the Noumenon, I will know Final Reality, not as a mathematical construct, but immediately, in my brain and bones." (XXII, p. 191)
Philosophically, the Noumenon is reality in itself and is contrasted with the phenomenon which is reality as perceived. Therefore, direct experience of the Noumenon is a contradiction. By the way, I do not believe that we perceive appearances and infer reality. Instead, I believe that we perceive reality, that reality appears to us and that our perception of it is its appearance to us. However, there remains an important distinction between the totality of reality and the aspects of it that we perceive.
On the one hand, Joelle is not mystically linking to the universe but technologically linking to her computer. On the other hand, the computer is giving her experiences, not mere abstractions. But the gripping hand, to quote Niven's and Pournelle's Moties, is that these experiences are within the brain-computer linkage, not in her brain's interactions with the universe at large. Therefore, surely, what she calls Absolute, Noumenon and Reality is a simulation, not the reality to which the simulation refers?
When a holothete directs force-fields that direct ions that manipulate amino acids, that is an interaction with reality but, when, on pp. 199-202, Joelle leads Eric through genetics, then through cosmology, surely that process is a series of simulations - certainly the cosmology? I will return to this passage.
11 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
From what you have written, and from what I recall of THE AVATAR, Joelle experiences while linked to her computer a very realistic and detailed simulation of reality, but not reality itself. Albeit it can be so massively detailed that it feels like reality to her.
Sean
I think it's both. There's real-world input, via sensors. There's real-world output -- she can affect physical reality through the links, and perceives what's done.
But the input is filtered -- made to make sense -- by being integrated into the algorithmic models of reality which make up physics, in the larger sense.
The implication is that incongruities between observational data, both passive and in the sense of unexpected results from action, lead the holothete to intuit errors or shortcomings in the model.
Mr Stirling,
I am picking up that it is both but only by rereading very closely.
Paul.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
That does put across far more accurately what I was trying to say.
And I recently finished reading BLACK CHAMBER, which I loved! And I liked how you how you did not portray the Germans as cardboard villains despite all too willing to commit those chlorine gas attacks on France and the UK, and the failed attack on the US.
In fact, one thought I had was thinking Horst von Duckmeler should have advised Paul von Hindenburg and his right hand man, General Ludendorff, AGAINST Germany attempting a preemptive attack on the US, on the grounds that the plan was too complicated and was too likely to fail for one reason or another. That reason, of course, being the Black Chamber spy, Luz Malloy. Any such attempt would have given Theodore Roosevelt the perfect casus belli needed to get Congress to declare war on the Central Allies. Far better to do whatever it took to prevent the US from entering the war as long as possible. The longer that took the more time the Central Powers would have to completing and consolidating their victories on the Eastern Front.
Also, even if some Germans didn't care about civilian casualties, it was a strategic mistake to commit those gas attacks on London, Bordeaux, and other major Entente cities. It would have been better to use the chlorine gas only on the Anglo/French armies on the Western Front. I do get that the London/Bordeaux attacks were meant to decapitate and destroy the British and French gov'ts. But the sheer horror of slaughtering millions of civilians was sheer overkill and pointless cruelty. It would have been less objectionable to use the gas to break the Anglo/French armies. The shattering shock and stunning casualties, along with a US still not in the war, should have allowed Germany to overrun France.
Also, I think this tendency you have for including lesbian subplots in your books can be overdone. I mean Tiphaine d'Ath, Marian Alston, Gwen Ingolffsson and her victims, Adrienne Breze and her victims, etc. And now Luz Malloy with Ciara Whelan. I think two such subplots would have been plenty. To be fair, I need to stress that is not the case with all your books. E.g., THE PESHAWAR LANCERS, CONQUISTADOR, and the two Lords of Creation books. Maybe I'm wrong, and you did not over do the lesbianism.
And I appreciated the Andersonian allusion when you had a "Fr. Flandry" mentioned twice in BLACK CHAMBER!
Sean
Sean,
I am glad you are not a military enemy of the UK!
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I certainly don't want to be a strategist planning how to defeat the UK in war, one of the most faithful and loyal allies of the US!
Another thought I was how it was a bad idea for Hindenburg and Lundendorff to have basically shunted aside the Kaiser and civilian politicians from any role in making the most important strategic and military decisions by 1916. A fixation on a purely military view of the war caused them to lose sight of the political and moral (in the wider sense of the word) consequences of their decisions. We see mention in BLACK CHAMBER of how displeased Wilhelm II had been when he learned of the May Raid on Paris. I conclude he would not have permitted the attempt to preemptively attack on the US or the gassing of those French and British cities.
Sean
Sean: glad you enjoyed the book.
BTW, it's not chlorine they're using; it's nerve gas, a close chemical relative of VX. Nerve gasses of that family are fundamentally different from the other WW1 gasses; they're genuine poisons, not acting through mechanical tissue damage.
Hence they're incomparably more deadly. A single two-pint liter of nerve gas has a -million- lethal doses, if perfectly distributed.
You can't actually get perfect distribution, but you can still get effects comparable with fusion bombs if you use a few score tons. It's a genuine weapon of mass destruction.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
Thanks for correcting my mistake: nerve gas was used in BLACK CHAMBER, not chlorine. And it certainly caused as much damage to the UK and France as fusion bombs would have done!
I look forward with great interest to reading your second BLACK CHAMBER book, probably next year. I hope we see Horst von Duckler again. And I hope we see more of Austria-Hungary and her new Emperor, Karl. Btw, the late Pope John Paul II beatified Kaiser Karl.
Sean
The next one is THEATER OF SPIES, in January. Mostly set in Berlin and on the way there.
January! Berlin! Happy New Year!
Dear Mr. Stirling,
Many thanks! I really am looking forward to THEATER OF SPIES!
Sean
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