[ExI] Fall, or Dodge in Hell

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

As promised, here is my take on Neal Stephenson's new book.

I am disappointed. Robin Hanson reviewed it here:

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2019/06/stephensons-em-fantasy.html

and I agree with his assessment, so I won't repeat it but let me just add a
few remarks.

At its core the book explores eschatology and ontology . It builds a
meta-reality with "Turtles all the way down" - a hierarchy of an unknown
number of levels of mental existence, where our level is visited by
emissaries of a higher plane of existence (Enoch Root, an old acquaintance
from other Stephenson books) and in turn spawns another level, "the Land"
of uploaded humans. Despite the trappings of gritty realism that might make
you think it's "hard" science-fiction, it is in fact a fantasy. I find
fantasy less compelling than science-based s-f because it tends be a mess
of ad hoc happenings, eschews the limitations that a more rigorous
framework would impose and thus fails to stimulate the kind of rules-based,
generative thinking that I enjoy. Conversely, a good fantasy may be
redeemed by precisely building a world out of a few premises and letting it
evolve in a coherent fashion.

This is where Fall falls into a hell of its own making. Stephenson implies
that every level of existence in his meta-reality must follow its own rules
on pain of becoming incoherent. The rules of Enoch Root's level are
unknown. The rules of the Land however are supposed to be derived from
computational limitations imposed by our own physical reality. The Land is
a very large physics simulation with added fantasy flavors and it runs on
quantum computers. If we were to follow that premise, we would need to
build an uploaded world that agrees with what we already know about human
neurology and thinking. In our world, for example, it is possible to read
many aspects of a mind using even very crude EEG technology, yet somehow,
the workings of this computational Land cannot be accessed except by
tracking the amount of money (!) spent on a given part of the simulation,
or something like that. Seriously? The administrators of the simulation
find themselves physically and computationally unable read its contents? In
our world, memory is a function of the physical substrate but somehow in
the upload world personal memory disappears even as the brain is simulated
at synapse level. This doesn't make any sense at all! This is completely
incoherent and hugely disappointing, especially after reading "Snow Crash"
and "Diamond Age" where the details followed from premises.

Stephenson also indulged in an at-length ritual denunciation of a hated
out-group, i.e. American flyover state white Christians. This thread of the
story feels like a kludgy add-on to the main theme and it further subtracts
from an already disappointing work.

Not recommended.

Rafal
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