“glowfic” apparently. written in a roleplay forum format.
This is not a story for kids, even less so than HPMOR. There is romance, there is sex, there are deliberately bad kink practices whose explicit purpose is to get people to actually hurt somebody else so that they’ll end up damned to Hell, and also there’s math.
start here. or don’t, of course.
jesus christ
also, thanks for the intro to “glowfic” - for a good chunk of my 20s I was obsessed with my side project which I called “plotplant” (dorky?) which was an infinitely forkable collaborative writing app. I never got it past a few different build attempts because I would always get caught in the weeds of how, if it were successful, the complexity of a story that had loads of branches would be navigated. My own personal xanadu. Anyway, this glowfic looks like a nightmare scenario that would keep me in them weeds, ruminating, “there has to be a better way!”
It’s so hard to read when every bit has all that meta info next to it! Written by Eliezer or not
Glowfic feels like a writing format designed in a lab to be the perfect channel for Eliezer’s literary diarrhea.
actually I found this ancient text online that helps explain everything:
Eliezer Monogatari, chapter 69:
On his mighty steed Oververbosity, Eliezer is fast approaching the cliff edge overlooking the dreaded Chasm of Unreadability. His desire to cram more words and IQfulness into his text has deafened him to the wails of the Ghost of Editors Past, begging him to at least paste into Google Docs and fix a few squigglies.
In a moment of rational brilliance, he casts Bayesian Reasoning and epiphanisationalises that he can Just Add Metainfo to every line, exponentially increasing his QLAWPW (quality of life adjusted words per word), making him The Greatest Author. His loyal mount leaps into the air over the abyss, buoyed by clouds of self-delusion.
Of course, he crashes and falls into the chasm. But what’s this? The miasma of unreadability… it’s more clouds of self-delusion generated by the cult of TREACLES! He rises, unscathed, head three sizes bigger than before.1
1: Scholars are divided on whether this is because the toxic miasma mutated his sense of self-worth or if he hit his head on the chasm floor and it swelled. We will never know.
It’s actually kind of an achievement that in the ultra-saturated Isakai genre they’ve managed to set a new standard in repulsive premises.
Ok, I tried giving it a fair shake, and I guess it’s got the same problem as every other forum roleplay: it’s fun to roleplay, not fun to read someone else’s roleplay.
Yeah, that’s where I’m at. I don’t think this is Yud doing HPMOR and trying to rope randos into rationality. Well, maybe he’s trying to rope the non-rat glowfic enjoyers, idk. In any case, this is Yud playing with a pal and having fun, I guess? Take that as you will.
As long as he’s writing collab forum pr0n and not hindering the creation of the Acausal Robot God, it’s all good.
Edit Yud is living disproof of the thesis that spending a large number of hours doing something makes one good at it.
I kind of wish there was a space in awful.systems to dunk on malcolm gladwell et al but it’s probably a little too far removed from stem fuckery.
If you haven’t listened to the “outliers” episode of the “if books could kill” podcast, i recommend it!
glowfic enjoyers
A real category?
Seems like a write-only medium.
But then, LitRPG also exists, much to my confusion and dismay.
From a downvoted comment:
Because players aren’t sure where a story is going and can’t edit previous sections, the stories tend to be plagued by pacing problems- scenes that could be a paragraph are dragged out over pages, important plot beats are glossed over, and so on. It’s also very rare that players are able to pull off the kind of coordination necessary for satisfying narrative buildup and payoff, and the focus on player character interaction tends to leave a lot of necessary story scaffolding like scene setting and NPC interaction badly lacking.
If your goal in writing this was in part to promote or socially explore these utopian ideas rather than just to enjoy a forum game, it may be worth considering ways to mitigate these issues- to modify the Glowfic formula to better accommodate an audience.
Yud’s response:
We are both experienced authors not in need of this advice at this level.
<no words, no words, they should have sent a poet.gif>“Editing? Where we’re going, we don’t need editing!” - Absolutely not Eliezer. Too succinct.
In my pursuit of clarity and precision, the art of composition itself becomes a meticulous process of refining ideas. Each word is a deliberate stroke, contributing to the coherence of thought, rendering traditional editing superfluous. The absence of formal editing is a deliberate choice, reflecting the belief that the initial act of creation captures the most authentic expression of my intellectual journey.
Now that is what yud1 might say.
1: By Yud I mean a 99.9% accurate simulation of Yud using ChatGPT, which, according to rationalist doctrine, is the same thing.
Ooh, there’s an idea. Train a LLM on his logorrhoea, output to a variety of places (as often with his face on a profile as not), and watch the little man twist himself up as he tries to position being okay with it while also really hating that it’s happening
Scenes that could be a paragraph are dragged out over pages
Amazing that this can be applied directly to HPMoR, which doesn’t have the defense of “glowfic”.
god he’s so stupid, sometimes it staggers me
this story takes place in a totalitarian state ruled by the literal forces of literal Hell
Look, I’m giving it a go but the very first line of the content warnings is a case of “is this written by a grown man or a 14 year old emo kid”
is this written by a grown man or a 14 year old emo kid
yes
(the MC is jughead from Riverdale lel)
Why do both Scotts and Eliezers pseudonyms end with ‘ain’? Yvain and Iarwain.
Edit: and small frustration what is up with the lack of timestamps? I know the internet is getting worse and worse with those replacing the ‘posted at 22 feb 2022’ with ‘posted 1 year ago’ things (as predicted in the transmetropolitan), or just having sites autoupdate the timestamps to seem current for the google ranking (saw a ‘2024’ guide which in the text still talked about 2023 and had a mid 2023 timestamp, so somebody messed up a script there). But no timestamps at all is a bit odd, the only timestamp I saw was ‘Jan 19, 2024, 3:29 PM’ and that looks suspiciously like ‘now’.
what is up with the lack of timestamps?
For mysterious reasons they’ve screened off their own past.
There are hidden timestamps, remove the “.post-footer { display: none; }” CSS from the page and they should appear, but yeah keeping timestamps from us is the worst I want to know when stuff went down.
I don’t even really care that much, it is just a small but ongoing frustration with enshittification of everything digital. (and the Rationalists do nothing! You live in SV damnit, do some effective angry protesting or something ;) )
Why protest when you could spend far less energy and just “not be wrong” and “have no stake” by over-fitting your statistical model to the past?
Thanks for filling my ‘make up people to be angry about’ quota for today.
Always my favorite part of your day.
I’m very good at it, it is one of my core competencies, which synergies well with the mission statement of awful.systems, in this powerpoint presentation I will…
“Iarwain”, cf. Charles’ Wain, wainwright; from the Middle English for “a wagon that transports ears”
Fake answer: at some point in rat history they thought that Armenian people were genetically superior and decided to take traditional Armenian surnames as their handles, but they both simultaneously and serendipitously bungled the spelling. The names should actually be “Yvian” (pronounced yiv-yahn) and “Iarwian” (pronounced ee-arh-wee-yahn)
Real answer: probably a tolkien elvish name idk
elvish name
https://www.glyphweb.com/arda/i/iarwainbenadar.php the elvish name of Tom Bombadil.
Could it be that Yud read about Bombadil, thought, “man it’s a good thing this dude is with the good guys, or middle earth would be screwed” and then decided to spin that into a technocult about AI?
Bombadil is a fat dude living in splendid isolation with a beautiful woman, unconcerned about the evils of the wider world. Perfect ideal for Yud.
yeah i tried but i don’t think this was meant to be read by anyone.
Yeah, it’s both impenetrable and punishing, which I think is in part due to the glowfic format (which I am new to). There’s even a glowfic primer from LW!.
One advantage of the format is I did like the bits where Yud’s writing partner seemed to be trying to rein in his nonsense spewing a bit.
More like… Project Awful
boom roasted
So if you read Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, and thought…
I did read HPOMR and I also thought!
"You know, HPMOR is pretty good
OK, I didn’t exactly think that. But go on.
so far as it goes; but Harry is much too cautious and doesn’t have nearly enough manic momentum,
Dunno about Harry, but the story as a whole could have done with some momentum, manic or otherwise.
his rationality lectures aren’t long enough, and all of his personal relationships are way way way too healthy."
Nobody in their right mind would ever think any of this.
what a terrible day to be literate
When I tried to read it I felt like I was illiterate.
I should have listened to the content warning because literally everything the main character (I shall call him Math Elk) says or thinks is completely insufferable rationalist buzzword babbling. Couldn’t make it past two pages.
It wasn’t an auspicious start when he gets on the plane and immediately treats a social interaction with a woman like a dang financial transaction. OK kept reading, maybe the main character comes from the planet of weird insufferable nerds on purpose.
It got unbearable when Math Elk did nothing but spew nonsense at Carissa and she seemed weirdly OK with it despite not being a weird nerd. Couldn’t maintain suspension of disbelief.
They’ve gone from math pets to math woodland creatures now?
Wait math pets?? Tell me more. Are they cute? How can I get one? Will a math pet sit on my desk solving all my everyday algebra problems for me? How cute are they when trying to figure out excel formulas?
Update: I looked up math pet and it was not at all what I had envisioned.
I think that’s roughly the idea, except replace “desk” with “penis”.
Update: I looked up math pet and it was not at all what I had envisioned.
welcome to Awful Systems! here’s your advil
2022, so there’s a good chance this is now abandoned and half-forgotten?
Last post in the collection of threads about this is April 2023
😞
Past 1M words
That’s gonna be 4.000 pages of extremely dubious porn and rationalist navel gazing, if anyone’s keeping count.
University level biochemistry handbook is ~quarter that thick and if EY read that, he’d never consider stiff bacteria as anything other than asinine fever dream
Stiff bacteria? Like… Meningitis?
See here.
There is romance, there is sex, there are deliberately bad kink practices whose explicit purpose is to get people to actually hurt somebody else
The fact that this isn’t just a ratfic of My Immortal is cowardice to the highest degree
Also, I will mention it every time it comes up: “dath ilan” is an anagram of thailand and there just has to be a reason, dammit.
Hi my name is Eliezer Rationa’lity Sanity Raven Jaynes and I have long ebony black hair (that’s how I got my name) with libertarian streaks and helpful tips that reaches my mid-back and icy blue eyes like limpid tears and a lot of people tell me I look like Robin Hanson (AN: if u don’t know who he is get da hell out of here!). I’m not related to E. T. Jaynes but I wish I was because he’s a major fucking hottie.
“Oh! Oh! Oh! ” I screamed. I was beginning to get an insight. We started to post everywhere and my pale body became all warm. And then….
“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING YOU MOTHERFUKERS!”
It was…………………………………………………….Kahneman!
OTOH “mediocre dunces” is an amazing phrase and I will continue to refer to TREACLES as such.
This is what I wanted, thanks. Stellar work as always.
