Misery
Novelist Paul Sheldon has plans to make the difficult transition from writing historical romances featuring heroine Misery Chastain to publishing literary fiction. Annie Wilkes, Sheldon's number one fan, rescues the author from the scene of a car accident. The former nurse takes care of him in her remote house, but becomes irate when she discovers that the author has killed Misery off in his latest book. Annie keeps Sheldon prisoner while forcing him to write a book that brings Misery back to life. Source
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- Something like this came up in Robert R. McCammon's 1987 book Swan Song[1], one of the first novels to win the Bram Stoker award[2] for Best Novel (alongside Stephen King's Misery that year).
One of the survivors finds a glass ring (something like trinitite) among the post-nuclear-blast rubble of Saks Fifth Avenue[3] in New York and sees visions of the future (or something) through it.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swan_Song_(McCammon_novel) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bram_Stoker_Award#External_lin... [3] my memories of this book may be embellishing this a bit....
- I've read five books so far this year.
1. The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason by Sam Harris
2. Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris (a re-read)
3. Lying by Sam Harris
4. Misery by Stephen King (a re-read)
5. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
I'd probably pick The Road by Cormac McCarthy as my favorite so far.
- I'll talk about fiction, since I've written some. If I write a ghost story it's because I enjoy ghost stories and want to take a crack at my own. While I don't know why ideas pop into my head, I do know that I pick the ones that are subjectively fun or to my taste. And if I do a clever job or a bad job I have a sense of it when I reread what I wrote.
These AI's aren't doing anything like that. They have no preference or intent. Their choices change depending on setting like temperature or prompts.
Or let's try a different example. Stephen King wrote a novel where he imagined the protagonist gets killed and eaten by the villain's pet pig (Misery). He struggled to come up with a different ending because he said nobody wants to read a whole novel just to see the main character die in the end. He thought about it and did a different ending.
Are you claiming Stephen King's conscious deliberation wasn't part of his writing process? I'd say it clearly was.
Also, I don't really understand the consciousness is an illusion argument. If none of us are conscious, why should I justify any copyright policy preference to you? That would be like justifying a copyright policy preference to a doorknob. But somehow I'm also a doorknob in this analogy???
Suppose Bob says he's conscious and Jim says he isn't and we believe them. Doesn't that suggest we would have different policy preferences on how they are treated? It would appear murdering Jim wouldn't be particularly harmful but murdering Bob would. I don't have to show how Jim and Bob's mind differ to prefer policies that benefit Bob over Jim.
- I'm referring to how Stephen King discusses his writing process in On Writing. I doubt you actually believe Stephen King might be a p zombie and I'm skeptical you really think consciousness is an illusion. I think if i chained you to a bed and sawed off your leg (like what happens to the protagonist in Misery) you would insist you were a conscious actor who would prefer to not suffer. I don't even know what consciousness is an illusion is supposed to mean.
If I sawed off your leg would it have the moral consideration of removing the leg of a barbie doll's leg if you feel your consciousness is an illusion?
When I write a story my brain might be doing something you could refer to as a black box calculation if you squint a little, but how is it "statistics?" When I feel the desire to urinate, or post comments on hacker news, or admire a rainbow, or sleep am I also "doing statistics?"
You seem to be referring to what people traditionally call "thinking" or "cognition" and rebranding it as "statistics" in search of some rhetorical point.
My point is human beings have things called "personalities" and "preferences" that inform their decision makings, including what to write. In what sense is that "statistics"?
The idea that the human subconscious is not consciously accessible is not a new idea. Freud had a few things to say about that. I don't think it tells us much about AI. I do think my subconscious ideas are informed by my consious preferences. If I hate puns I'm not going to imagine story jdeas involving puns, for example.
Most authors would prefer copyright exists because they'd prefer book publishers, bookstore retailers and the like pay them royalties instead of selling the books they made without paying them. It's pretty simple conceptually, at least with traditional books.
Copyright existed far longer than the last 50 years so how is our 50 years of culture relevant? The U.S. has had copyright since 1790.
- > The head of NIDA showed in brain studies that cocaine and Ritalin were indistinguishable.
Am I missing something here? Should we be surprised that brain scans show that two CNS stimulants were indistinguishable?
Also, that study was conducted almost 30 years ago on mice [1].
I'm a firm believer in the saying, "the dose makes that poison." In this case, I'd also say the habits make the poison too. Even if the drugs have similar effects, I've never seen someone take bumps of Ritalin off the groove in keys, grow long pinky nails to take Ritalin, cook Ritalin in a spoon with a lighter to smoke it, have nose reconstruction surgery due to Ritalin abuse, etc. (I'm not saying abuse does not/can not happen). Can you name any songs about one's love/hate for Ritalin? While we are at it, I don't think Stephen King wrote, "Misery" about his struggles with Ritalin abuse either...
I just think using cocaine to damn Ritalin is such a glaring example of a false equivalence. The comparison does nothing, but further stigma people that need help for a legitimate disorder. Whether one believes the disorder has social or biological origins is irrelevant to people actually suffering.
Sure, we can all probably agree "Big Pharma" has done plenty of good and plenty of bad, but what are the other solutions? Outside of completely turning society upside-down, many people's only solution for help is "Big Pharma."
[1] Is methylphenidate like cocaine? Studies on their pharmacokinetics and distribution in human brain
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/15427108_Is_methylp...
- I couldn't disagree with that at all. I enjoy reading Stephen King books, at times, but there aren't that many of them that have become great films.
Off the top of my head the best King films have been "The Shining", "Misery", "Pet Semetry", "Stand by Me", & "The Shawshank Redemption".
So many more films have been terrible (I've not seen the recent version of "It").
