Niall Teasdale's Blog, page 2

Disruptive Elements Art Dump

Click above to go to the collection. There’s not much to see this time, but there is an updated map and a better picture of Hrogthan.

Who noticed the ‘Aliens’ easter egg?

Just wondering how many people noticed the Aliens reference in Disruptive Elements? Pure curiosity.

Still working on the next Death’s Handmaiden book. I think it’s looking good, even if I’m wobbling over precisely how it’s going to end.

Disruptive Elements is live!

The sequel to Elementary, Disruptive Elements, is now available. FYI, I had to put the price up a little, but not too much. Someone bought it before I even got this page up. Thanks.

SmashwordsAmazon ASIN: B0D1KR5WS1USUKAUCADE

Disruptive Elements… coming soon

Actually, coming tomorrow, barring unforeseen circumstances. Should be out in the afternoon (of April 12th). That’s UK afternoon. Morning in the US. Night for Australia. Aren’t time zones wonderful?!

Calista is going to be taking a little trip. It will involve mud huts and beefy barbarian warriors. There will be a lot of weird magical science.

So, I had this idea for a book…

The title of this magnum opus is: The Greatest Sage, Who is Also a Genius Alchemist and Master Assassin, is Reincarnated as a Slime Who is Also the 19th Son of the Demon King.

Then the back cover blurb reads: The contents of this novel have no passing resemblance to the title.

There’s only one problem: I have no idea what the contents should be!

Actually, I have had a few ideas, but nothing’s really worked so far. Maybe one day…

NESFW Wallpaper

That’s Not Entirely Suitable for Work. There’s not really much on show….

It’s new DH time once again, and that means I wanted a new wallpaper for my rendering machine, and Stonemason just put out this awesome scene model, and Nava was just asking to be dropped into it. You should be able to download the image by clicking above. It would be too dark for a book cover, but for a screen backdrop, it’s fine.

Oh, this image has absolutely nothing to do with the story I’m writing. You will not be reading about Nava (or anyone else) walking naked in a jungle river. She might hurt me if I did that to her.

The 3 Body Problem Problem

Disclaimer: This isn’t really about 3 Body Problem because I haven’t seen the Netflix series or read the book. This is, if anything, about The Dark Forest (second in the trilogy, which I haven’t read either. So, it’s not really about that either. I’m not into criticising something I haven’t read. Oh, this is a bit of a long rant. Feel free to not read it.

Given what I wrote above, I should clarify. What I have a problem with is the so-called Dark Forest Theory as a solution to the Fermi Paradox. I won’t be assuming that makes any sense to anyone, though I suspect you may have a clue about the Fermi Paradox at least if you read my books. The Fermi Paradox is fairly simple: if alien life is common in the universe, why haven’t we seen it? Various solutions exist, almost all of them being horribly depressing. The Dark Forest Theory adds a bit of existential horror to the mix. It says that any civilisation which pokes its head out (sends signals from its planet which can be detected in another system) is immediately destroyed. That means that any civilisation which does exist is either keeping very quiet, or has been nuked into oblivion by now. Thus, the last thing we should be doing is making noise. If we do, we’re toast. The name comes from Liu Cixin’s second novel, where this theory is explored in some detail (I believe), but the basics behind it have been around a lot longer. Fred Saberhagen’s Berserker books have ancient war machines roaming the galaxy looking for developing civilisations to destroy, for example.

The Dark Forest Theory is based on game theory. Take two worlds, A and B. Assume that both have the means to destroy the other using some sort of high-tech, planet-busting weapon. A makes noise and B detects it. Now B has some options. Make contact with A. Stay silent. Destroy A. If they make contact, A may decide to destroy B: B has lost (everything). If they stay silent, A may eventually find them and then may destroy them, so they lose. The only sensible option is to immediately destroy A making them no longer a threat. A cold, hard assessment of how things could play out suggests that any reasonable civilisation should stay silent and blast anyone they discover. Hence, the silent universe we see. It all sounds perfectly reasonable, doesn’t it?

Except…

Except that this is basically Pascal’s Wager for sci-fi. Blaise Pascal came up with his wager to explain why you should believe in God. It goes like this (well, not quite, but here’s the basic idea): If God exists, not believing in him will result in infinite punishment (an eternity in Hell), where believing in him grants infinite reward (Heaven). If God doesn’t exist, believing in him results in minimal loss (a bit of time and money). You can’t begin to compare infinity to anything with a real number, no matter how big, so it makes logical sense to believe in God just in case he does exist. If you don’t and he’s real, you’re in for an eternity of pain. I hope you can see where this is reflected in Dark Forest Theory. It’s the ‘you lose everything,’ infinite punishment thing. It’s common to this kind of thing.

There’s also Roko’s Basilisk, an existential horror thing which came out of Reddit. Suppose there will, at some point, come to pass a super-AI which will be of great benefit to mankind. It is of such benefit, in fact, that it thinks that anyone who fails to ensure that it comes into existence should be punished, forever. (Then we add the existential horror thing: It won’t punish people who don’t know about it, so it’s only now that you’ve heard about it that you’re in danger. You’re welcome.) Of course, this AI is only a hypothetical, so you’re free not to believe in it, but can you risk it? No, you just have to start working to make it exist for fear of infinite punishment.

All of these fall foul of what’s called the Black and White Fallacy. All of them assume that the situation is black and white, there are only two possible outcomes. They ignore third parties. Pascal ignores other gods. Roko ignores other AIs. Dark Forest assumes two players in the game. In reality, if you believe in God, you are ignoring other gods who may exist and may not be pleased with you for worshipping that one tribal war god. (Also, Pascal assumes God is a superficial idiot. If I were God, people persuaded by this argument would be the first ones in the Pit.) Roko ignores all the other potential super-AIs who also want to be created. (Roko’s Basilisk is an obvious Pascal clone, and not even a very good one. How this caused such a stir on Reddit, I do not know. If you want to know more, Wikipedia is your friend.) Dark Forest ignores other civilisations…

If someone else is watching, and B attacks A, it’s likely that B just gave themselves away to other, sneakier aliens. B is toast. B loses. This is where the Berserker idea makes way more sense. If you really want this to work, you send out probes to find potential threats and destroy them. Do it quietly enough, keep your head down, and you can stay alive while everyone else perishes. But, if you’re being really sensible, you can’t leave it at that because someone might find you. In the original Dark Forest idea and the Berserker one, the only way to really win is to colonise as much of the universe as you can. Go fast and go far. Make sure that the destruction of any one planet or system can’t destroy your species. Killing anyone else you find is just a side benefit. But, of course, that doesn’t solve Fermi’s paradox. In fact, instead of being a solution to the Fermi Paradox, Dark Forest suggests that we should already have been visited by aliens. Maybe they come and kick our butts for the habitable planet, maybe they come in the form of a mega-warship which destroys us. Either way, given how long the galaxy has been around, someone should have turned up to wipe us out by now.

I suspect the real solution to the Fermi Paradox is that it’s way harder to evolve intelligent life than we suspect, or that most intelligent species blow themselves up before they become noisy enough for us to notice. And we can leave the existential horror to fiction.

PS. If anyone has watched or read 3 Body Problem, let me know what you thought, please. It strikes me as somewhat Lovecraftian, which has put me off. The basic idea behind Lovecraftian horror is that intelligent people are really stupid (i.e. they stay in the haunted mansion and let the monsters get them when someone dumber would’ve run away). I got a bit frustrated with Lovecraft’s ‘heroes ‘ when I was a lot younger.

Onion Reality

I have this weird problem on YouTube. (Don’t we all, I hear you ask.)

For whatever reason, the Almighty Algorithm decided to pop up some videos from The Onion (which I thought didn’t do anything these days). I watched a couple, because I find them funny, so now I see more of them, including the old stuff from a decade ago when they used to have a budget.

My problem now is that I have to double check every ‘news’ video that comes up in case they’re fake ones created by the Onion ten years ago. It’s really hard to tell the difference between stuff they did as parody/satire back then and what’s really happening in the real news today!

We live in Onion Reality. I don’t believe in God, but… God help us.

(This has been your random dose of boredom-induced weird thoughts. And now, back to the editing.)

It’s all coming to an end!

That’s the winter anime season. I hope I didn’t give you the wrong impression or anything. (he, he, he.)

Frieren and The Apothecary Diaries came to an end last week. My guilty pleasure of the season Tis Time for “Torture,” Princess ended tonight. Level 99… ends tomorrow. I’m sad. *sniff*

Mind you, it’s a good thing in a way. The spring season this year is a bit packed. Like, ‘there aren’t enough hours in the day’ packed. Konosuba, The Slime Isekai, Mushoku Tensei… And those are just the sequel seasons I can think of off the top of my head. Some of the new ones are probably going to be worth watching. Oh, I forgot the third season of The Irregular at Magic High School. That starts soon. Appropriate since I’m writing the seventh Death’s Handmaiden book. I think it’s the Steeplechase Arc which will probably be better as an anime than it was as a novel.

Anyhoo, if you want to watch something which is just plain silly (but also has a hot demon torturer in it), I recommend Tis Time for “Torture,” Princess. Whimsical is the best word I can think of to describe it. (Also, the chief torturer is, like, hot.) Absolutely nothing exciting ever happens, but it is funny. (And did I mention the hot demon torturer?) Oh, and they’ve announced a second season, so that cheered me up a bit. Link below, if you feel like checking it out.

TMWWNT Art Dump

Art dump for The Man Who Was Never There. Link through the cover image.

I didn’t do too many renders for this one, but there is a world map available.