Path: ...!weretis.net!feeder9.news.weretis.net!news.quux.org!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Don Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.fandom, rec.arts.sf.written Subject: Re: idiots walk among us Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2025 14:39:56 -0000 (UTC) Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 81 Message-ID: <20250310a@crcomp.net> References: <0001HW.2D7BB48800F8D22B70000998A38F@news.supernews.com> <20250308b@crcomp.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2025 15:39:57 +0100 (CET) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="0f893ee95459b0be2fee8d7ca6dccb82"; logging-data="1478251"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX181Cv2gPs3n+hr3KejlWrUO" Cancel-Lock: sha1:hiSVdbiUW1xblLFiZ/6h7+KHkZE= Bytes: 4752 Associated annotations appended. Charles Packer wrote: > WolfFan wrote: > >> >> >> you can’t make this up. If someone tried to put this into the plot of a >> work of SF, any competent editor would reject it as too stupid to allow >> suspension of disbelief. > > There is an SF story about that, sort of. It's called "The > Waveries" by Frederick Brown. It's about a deluge of radio signals > that turn out to be early earthly radio broadcasts that have been > bounced back at us. What we're seeing in the public sphere > currently is something analagous: a whole bunch of century-old > cultural memes being bounced back at us. Allusion to real early > 20th century medical practices is just one of them. Think about > it: tariffs, immigration, a war (Ukraine) full of imagery > resembling World War II. So it goes. The parsimonious interpretation > of all this is that the nation has been rented out to some sort of > theatrical production. It's a septical spectacle (so to speak) to witness the Anglosphere desperately cling to its glorious past. Last week theatrocratical [1] Trump took the cake with Zelensky, no? What would Plato say? Followup: When the West weaponizes drama it becomes political theater. In answer to the question rhetorical regarding rule of a democracy by drama (a theatrocracy, in other words), Plato says: Exposure to dramatic poetry nurtures and waters the passions instead of drying them up; it sets them up as rulers in us when they ought to be subjects. ... The tragic poet is an imitator, and therefore, like all other imitators, he is thrice removed from the king and the truth. ... Imitative art is far removed from truth and leads the soul away from the rational to the emotional. Philip K Dick's stories commonly contain counterfeit reality. AI's aggressive avatars in THE GOLDEN AGE by Wright remind me of the screaming salesmen in SALES PITCH by Dick: When they noticed Phaethon staring (perhaps they had registers to note his eye movements and pupil dilation (such information was, after all, in the public domain) they folded and swooped, clamoring, pressing around him, squawking, urging him to try, just once, free trial offer, their profferred stimulants and additions, false memories, compositions, and thought schemes. They swarmed like angry sea gulls or hungry children from some historical drama. The music was, if anything, worse. A group from the Red Manorial School on one hillside in the distance were having a combination scream-feast, Bacchanalia, and composition- symphony analogue. Emancipated partials of the Psycho-asymmetric Insulae-Composition were on the other hillside, having a noise duel. Their experimental 36-and 108-tone scale music, subsonic and hypersonic, trembled in Phaethon’s teeth. They made no effort to muffle the sound for the sake of those who did not share their extensive ear/auditory lobe modifications, their peculiar subjective time-scale alterations, or their even more peculiar aesthetic theories. Why should they? Every civilized person was assumed to have access to some sort of sense-filter to allow them to block or to tolerate the noise. Note. [1] Think theatrocracy not theocracy. Danke, -- Don.......My cat's )\._.,--....,'``. https://crcomp.net/reviews.php telltale tall tail /, _.. \ _\ (`._ ,. Walk humbly with thy God. tells tall tales.. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.' Make 1984 fiction again.