Loser
Thomas Bernhard was one of the most original writers of the twentieth century. His formal innovation ranks with Beckett and Kafka, his outrageously cantankerous voice recalls Dostoevsky, but his gift for lacerating, lyrical, provocative prose is incomparably his own. One of Bernhard's most acclaimed novels, The Losercenters on a fictional relationship between piano virtuoso Glenn Gould and two of his fellow students who feel compelled to renounce their musical ambitions in the face of Gould's incomparable genius. One commits suicide, while the other-- the obsessive, witty, and self-mocking narrator-- has retreated into obscurity. Written as a monologue in one remarkable unbroken paragraph, The Loser is a brilliant meditation on success, failure, genius, and fame.
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4recommend
5mentions
4people
2009–2026years
80% recommend20% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I agree with your fundamental point. However, I don't think steady erosion of mastery is the only way that these next years have to go, even if it looks the most likely at present. Supposing LLMs or whatever future architecture surpass even the greatest human minds in intelligence, why is that situation fundamentally different to living in a world with Einstein, i.e. a level of mastery I'll never reach before the end of my life? As one interested in the depths, I prefer to live in a world with peaks ever greater than myself---it doesn't prevent me from going as deep as I can, inspired by where they've reached, and doing the things that matter to me.
Turing's view, in fact, is similar: "There would be great opposition [to AI] from the intellectuals [read programmers in the context of this thread] who were afraid of being put out of a job. It is probable though that the intellectuals would be mistaken about this. There would be plenty to do, i.e. in trying to keep one’s intelligence up to the standard set by the machines, for it seems probable that once the machine thinking method had started, it would not take long to outstrip our feeble powers. There would be no question of the machines dying, and they would be able to converse with each other to sharpen their wits."
[0] Thomas Bernhard's The Loser is a fantastic account of the opposite standpoint---of the second best piano student, who cannot stand existing in a world with Glenn Gould.
- Check out "The Loser" by Thomas Bernhard. Not a biography, but an excellent novel inspired by Bach
- Just finished reading The Loser by Thomas Bernhard. Cruel, repetitive, ironic... effing brilliant. It's about three pianists - one of them it's Glenn Gould, and how meeting him ruined the life of the other two. Currently reading High Fidelity by Nick Hornby. I can't be objetive about him, I simple love it. (The movie is great, also)
- BTW, have you read the novel 'The Loser' by Thomas Bernhard?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Loser_(book)
I bet most people here would like it. One of the three main characters is a fictitious Glenn Gould.
- It can be a mix of both. There's no reason, after all, that humans no longer being the most intelligent systems on the planet has to mean giving up such a passion, especially since it means living in a world with more and not less mathematics. One has to separate the joy of doing mathematics from a capacity (or, more importantly, need) to obtain a living doing it from the pride of being the best in your field.
It's interesting to recall Turing's own position: "There would be great opposition [to AI] from the intellectuals who were afraid of being put out of a job. It is probable though that the intellectuals would be mistaken about this. There would be plenty to do, i.e. in trying to keep one’s intelligence up to the standard set by the machines, for it seems probable that once the machine thinking method had started, it would not take long to outstrip our feeble powers. There would be no question of the machines dying, and they would be able to converse with each other to sharpen their wits."
On the other hand, Thomas Bernhard's The Loser is a horrifying account of the opposite standpoint---of an essentially second best piano student who cannot stand existing in a world with Glenn Gould.
