Thunderhead
The Thunderhead is the perfect ruler of a perfect world, but it has no control over the scythedom. A year has passed since Rowan has gone off grid. Since then he has become an urban legend, a vigilante snuffing out corrupt scythes in a trial by fire. His story is told in whispers across the continent. As Scythe Anastasia, Citra gleans with compassion and openly challenges the ideals of the "new order." But when her life is threatened and her methods questioned, it becomes clear that not everyone is open to the change. In the thrilling sequel to the Printz Honor Book Scythe, old foes and new enemies converge. And as corruption within the scythedom spreads, Rowan and Citra begin to lose hope. Will the Thunderhead intervene? Or will it simply watch as this perfect world begins to unravel? This description comes from the publisher. Thunderhead is the second book in the Arc of a Scythe, the first of which is Scythe.
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What Hacker News says
- I've read the Tao Te Ching dozens of times. Every few years I'll re-read one new passage, daily, for three months (there aren't too many words within this semi-spiritual text).
My most recent read is the first, post-ChatGPT. From Verse Thirteen, three lines finally jumped out at me (which never have, before):
>>"I suffer because I'm a body; if I weren't a body, how could I suffer?" [1]
Already LLMs have shown me connections that no other human could endure/conjure from me (I've paid for a few attorney/therapists in my few decades living). Currently I'm the plaintiff in a lawsuit which I began with LLM counsel, and now have human counsel — this arrangement has saved lots of prep time, and led to interesting discussions with both counsel, human ¬.
One interesting conversation led to my human attorney recommending Neal Shusterman's Scythe Trilogy, which I've since read and absolutely re-recommend. Written in 2016 (same year as Attention is All You Need), it eerily hypothesizes many of the SciFi complexities that omnipotent general AIs now already-do ("Thunderhead" in scythespeak).
[1] Ursula K. LeGuin ~translation~, similar to Buddhist concept of "life is suffering"
- Thanks — corrected!
Did you enjoy Thunderhead even more than Scythe (like I am, 2/3rds done)? Some absolute insanity... poor "Scythe" Tyger's deception!
Book was recommended to me by my now-attorney, after rambling about LLMs enabling commoners access to lawfare during our initial consultation. Despite being "young adult fiction," Shusterman has definitely helped me to better understand my attorney brothers questing their powers [0].
[0] I am an avid reader, 70+ books per year, including all Wallace/Steinbeck/Vonnegut. The Scythe series hits. Just so good. So simple yet complex. Doesn't require thinking to read, but leaves you thinking about what you read.
- I coincidentally read Kurt Vonnegut's first novel, Player Piano, during my first few weeks exploring ChatGPT (~January 2023~). The book explores the rebellion of automated factory workers, drawing inspiration from Vonnegut's own mid-20th-Century experiences working at a GE manufacturing facility.
That was a Cassandra-like experience.
If anybody has never read Vonnegut, I'd definitely recommend Piano over Thieme's Mindgames.
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I'm currently halfway through Neal Shusterman's Scythe Trilogy, which he published right before LLMs became reality. A ficticious global AI entity, known collectively as "Thunderhead," begins each chapter with its own all-knowing passage about how it perceives humanity's progression.
It's really quite creepy reading, with many of Shusterman's ficticious Thunderhead passages having already proven possible (particularly: characters maintaining friendships with chatty Thunderhead; ability to know something about everything; hallucinations; government by uncodified code; ability to lie, either intentionally or by human deception).
Really exciting storytelling, and I foresee many more of its future non-predictions becoming foreseeable future.
- There's a very popular young adult novel out called Scythe written by Neal Shusterman. In this novel there is a benevolent cloud-based AI in charge of ruling over the whole world named The Thunderhead ( because The Cloud wasn't impressive enough).
It's cool to see part of this fictional world coming to life
