So what did you do? Clearly you didn't die. Did you just have no insurance for the week before the new job started, or what?
This also happened to you while you were working and slightly between jobs. So it's not really a FIRE concern if the concern is the US messing up the health care system even more in that it would effect everyone whether working or not. Generally speaking, an answer to mitigating a lot of types of risk with a FIRE model is: you just go back to work for a while. This is easier the younger you are.
Edit: Also I thought COBRA would have been a more recent thing but it was Regan era. So did you not have employer-sponsored coverage with the startup?
No, my then fiance/now wife and I canceled our wedding we had planned, and went to the courthouse and got married six months earlier so I could get on her insurance.
Also, just so happen I did end up in the hospital three weeks later because something happened that affected my breathing for an entire year.
And how do you “go back to work” if the entire reason you need to go back to work is that you have a health condition?
If you haven’t checked, jobs aren’t that easy to come by quickly in 2026 in tech like they use to be. Sure I could find someone to give me a contract if not hire me full time - but we are still back to not having insurance .
The US messing up insurance on the open market is the concern and it being back like it was pre ACA. That only affects the unemployed under 65.
As far as being between jobs - usually you can get COBRA for a limited amount of time - not an option for FIRE.
Oh yeah, that brings up another point, I did pay for COBRA for two months back then. The contract I had paid more than enough to afford it. Then the acquiring company shut down their insurance plan and COBRA wasn’t even an option
Nope, it's just mindful capital allocation. There are plenty of ways to spend money wisely on a wedding. It's just a big party, and maybe a traditional ceremony. It's whatever you want it to be.
I haven't kept up with the Claude plays stuff, did it ever actually beat the game? I was under the impression that the harness was artificially hampering it considering how comparatively more easily various versions of ChatGPT and Gemini had beat the game and even moved on to beating Pokemon Crystal.
The Claude Plays Pokemon stream with a minimal harness is a far more significant test of model intelligence compared to the Gemini Plays Pokemon stream (which automatically maintains a map of everything that has been seen on the current map) and the GPT Plays Pokemon stream (which does that AND has an extremely detailed prompt which more or less railroads the AI into not making this mistakes it wants to make). The latter two harnesses have become too easy for the latest generations of model, enough so that they're not really testing anything anymore.
Claude Plays Pokemon is currently stuck in Victory Road, doing the Sokoban puzzles which are both the last puzzles in the game and by far the most difficult for AIs to do. Opus 4.5 made it there but was completely hopeless, 4.6 made it there and is is showing some signs of maaaaaybe being eventually bruteforce through the puzzles, but personally I think it will get stuck or undo its progress, and that Claude 4.7 or 5 will be the one to actually beat the game.
This is a nice and unexpected release, thanks for writing it. Getting a RPG endorsement is great. I just finished reading his foreword and skimming the table of contents and bibliography from the preview. I'd have liked to see a sample of a middle chapter to really see how technical and deep it gets (e.g. Land of Lisp gives its chapter 8 as a sample which I think is very representative for that book). But I plan to get this book regardless -- just not right now.
The back blurb hints that expert systems might be mentioned, but how much? No one ever seems to go much into their implementation or usage.[0] It also mentions writing some JS, which I guess is part of chapter 5, I wonder if that was a publisher request. (My favorite take on that subject in recent years is https://github.com/jart/sectorlisp)
Would it be fair to say this is mainly a history told through the lens of AI and PL research?
Amusingly I think part of me is already setting myself up for some disappointment -- it seems too short with too few references! But it's good to have a Lisp history book like this looks to be and I'm sure I'll learn things from it, and the promise of more RPG writings inside is enticing. Besides, any complete telling would take multiple books. (There's so much of historical interest locked up in proprietary applications and companies with their own histories, and so many papers published, there's also so much that can be dug through in the standardization mailing list (and other lists, like emacs) archives[1], the SAIL archives[2], the Xerox PARC archives[3], the CMU archives[4], and the many undigitized things sitting in boxes at the computer history museum...[5])
[5] Even in the earliest Lisp reports like https://www.researchgate.net/publication/42766480_Artificial... there are interesting things mentioned like a two-move checkmate program or "Other projects on which work continues include the Advice Taker, visual pattern recognition, and an artificial hand." Multiple times I've tried to track down those sorts of things mentioned in really old papers only to hit dead-ends on so many of them. Sometimes things were embellished, or were abandoned, or were just lost to time, and sometimes there's an undigitized box at the museum that might contain printouts etc. (There might be MYCIN source code, even.)
Yes, the book doesn't do Lisp justice, it is too short. But at the current volume, I had something at least passing muster; I'm toying with extending it but that depends on feedback/success/etc. There are a lot of Lisp implementations I haven't mentioned (or dealt with in the depth they deserve), there is a lot more to say about the sort of AI work that was (and, I think, is) done with Lisp, etc. And I have written it with a "general techie" audience in mind more than "I'm already a hardcore Lisper", I will probably disappoint the latter group with a lack of depth. I haven't aspired to LOL or PAIP or similar great works.
It's a history through a lens, but if there is one I'd say "MIT/Stanford" as a central axis rather than a field of reesarch.
And Javascript? My own choice. The amount of "language" I needed was very small and I actually like the very minimalistic (lisp-y?) sort of Javascript you can write these days if you just ignore most of its history. It's accessible, that was more important to me than anything else - one of the few concessions where I wanted to make things digestible to as wide an audience as possible in a language that was good for the problem at hand. Strangely enough, it worked very well (I think).
I heard your (and others') request for a better sample chapter than the intro that Amazon shows, I'll put it on the site as soon as possible.
That choice absolutely makes sense, once you recall that Brendan Eich was initially hired to write a Scheme! Business and Netscape being what they are, it ended up with Javascript, but there are some lispy roots.
I went for the somewhat humbler reasons of "I can assume that my reader will know it at least a bit" and "simple to obtain" - a bunch of the examples will run in the browser :-)
But yes, JS' dynamic/LISP-y roots did make my examples simple to implement and thus simple to follow. No trickery was needed, it was all pretty straightforward.
(JS is a much maligned language and for very good reasons, it had a shaky past and still is too full of warts that should be excised at some point. But modern JS with the help of modern IDEs isn't actually _that_ terrible and traits like it being prototype-based make some otherwise complicated things easy)
I think the question is different for the typical chess player compared to those at the very top. And at the very top we don't have that much data... going back to Fischer, he had a short career and disappeared by 32, but not really for lack of ability. For Karpov, his reign lasted about 10 years from age 24-34, but even after that he was in the top 3 or top 5 for another 15 years until he retired in his 50s. Kasparov reigned for 20 years, retiring at the top at age 41, and is maybe most impressive for defeating his same-generation rival Karpov while also holding the newcomers of Kramnik and Anand at bay. With Kasparov gone those two battled at the top for another 10ish years into their late 30s and mid-40s respectively (and I'd give the edge to the older Anand) before Magnus won the championship in 2013 and has been dominating for 13 years since. So to summarize, I don't think it's that "impressive" to still be winning at 35, he can probably keep winning for quite some time to come. He probably won't surpass his peak ELO though.
Good point, it was sloppy of me to call them same-generation, I distracted myself with thinking about Kasparov's long reign at the very top which I view as defining a sort of competitive era ("generation") that was shared for the majority of Karpov's active career at the top levels as well, even though it extends past that and Karpov had his own period prior to the Kasparov rivalry. It's interesting to bring that back to the question of how much age matters though since Karpov kept playing and was also still very strong against the even newer players (Anand and Kramnik being 18 and 24 years younger) for most of the 90s too.
It's less of a problem on Firefox because you aren't forced into auto-updating them. But yeah, Stylish is the biggest example that comes to mind.
I prefer using Greasemonkey / Tampermonkey but the ecosystem is full of sketchy scripts too and some people foolishly have auto-updates enabled. Also it's bizarrely really hard to get someone to use such a user script if they don't already have the parent extension installed, but if you package it as an extension on its own they'll try it much more easily.
> Gottumukkala failed the polygraph in the final weeks of July. The Department of Homeland Security began investigating the circumstances surrounding the polygraph test the following month and suspended six career staffers, telling them that the polygraph did not need to be administered.
I think for a lot of people, simply having "Author: Gwern" (or some other author they like) is the sufficient bit of information to make them care, it's generic on the content. I've read a lot of not very stylish writing simply because of who wrote it. Or in other words, "Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter." Whatever quirks of bad style there are will get a pass because I already care -- style is more important when you want to reach someone who hasn't heard of you.
Yeah, but even that isn't going to make me care about why Gwern is obsessing over Venice. Part of that is that I follow Overly Sarcastic Productions on youtube and "Blue" did a vastly better job of expressing/performing "I'm excited about Venice, and in a couple of minutes you will be too!" - an advantage of the medium and of their chosen style, for reaching someone like me who isn't all that compelled by European history.
(Yes, I get that it was an example to make a point about a writing style; one of the risks of really concrete examples is bouncing off of the example itself :-)
I like where you’re heading with this and to a degree I think that it leads toward considerations about the personality of the author in tow with their writing and writing ability which on its head evokes questions about what makes a person, well, personable. Which turns this into a sensitive discussion about what one can glean about an author’s character traits based on their writing style and when the author in question is only a ‘public figure’ in the eyes of the niche collection of online enclaves who are even aware that Gwern exists it becomes tough to candidly critique his literary persona with the sort of freedom that one may have when talking about say, some guy who’s written for the Atlantic for 30 years and is further from the spaces where criticisms about his work are held.
My criticisms about Gwern’s writing is not meant to be taken...ahem...personally in the sense that I don’t want to use Gwern as a subject for whatever literary critique I’m trying to proffer beyond how useful it is—and is presenting itself—as a fine case to help make whatever point I’m trying to make more clear about how Writing style is inextricable from and indicative of personality or lack thereof. And this is probably a part of what makes reading and writing such a profound experience.
One of the most interesting remarks about Gwern’s writing is this comment [1]:
> Everything I read from gwern has this misanthropic undertones. It's hard to put a finger on it exactly, but it grits me when I try reading him.
While I can't agree with the entirety of `mola’s comment—I simply haven’t put that much thought into making as grave of an evaluation into Gwern’s character as such a judgement would demand, nor am I that interested in deliberating over such an evaluation—it still resonates with me as a reader and you’ll find in my comment downthread from `mola’s remark that it’s at least plausible that an affinity for self-expression and intellectualizing about the world doesn’t necessitate an interest in the rest of its inhabitants in a way that causes me not to find the thesis behind “First, make me care” to be coloured with a stroke of irony, considering who’s behind it.
You say "style is more important when you want to reach someone who hasn't heard of you.” I agree with that and I reckon that it’s still style that forms a non-trivial amount of how you identify with ‘who’ the author is once you’ve become familiar with they’re work and can set an expectation for why their ideas may be worthwhile to engage with in the first place. Again, Paul Graham’s writing has a style although no where to the degree that Maciej Cegłowski does. You can evince characteristics about each of them relative to how and what they write about. You can even speculate on ways that their respective personalities could lead to friction between them. [2]
When we interrogate the “who” behind “who wrote” we are making judgements about the personality of the author and how that that makes us interested in their ideas. Today there are various non-literary mediums that give us a glimpse at a person’s personality with which we can anticipate whether it’s worth reading what they write. But if all you go by is their writing then how they write is about the only way for you to speculate about 'who' the author is and what they’re like as a person.
There are probably holes in this line of reasoning but I don’t think the lines between writing style, personal appeal and the ability to appeal to readers through how you write—effectively signaling to your personality in the process!—are as distinct as I think you’re portraying them. What’s the opposite of orthogonal? Correlated?
To end: Gwern’s writing lacks personality to me. This makes it hard to reconcile with the point he’s making in this article (which I agree with!) and my perception of his own writing (which invariably and perhaps even unfortunately invites speculation into any writer’s own personality).
Again, please, Does Gwern have anything that sounds as striking as “Empires Without Farms: The Case of Venice” or was that example a tacit hat tip to Brett Devereaux’s work? I don’t think the guy is a misanthrope but I do sense a wall of text—both figuratively and literally—between he and I when engaging with his writing. He is evidently well and widely read and despite my dislike for the visual form of his website I think that it is still a solid technical display of hypertext for personal web design and information architecture. But in spite of this all I find that it lacks depth, not intellectually but personally. ’Spiritually’, if you will.
[1] Now you may be able figure out my reasoning for the first paragraph re: public figures and criticism. I guess that’s this puts me in the camp of those who don’t believe that’s possible to separate art from the artist. Discussing one commands a look into the other, otherwise why bother with ‘art’ and ‘artists’ at all?
[2] Those who are familiar with both Graham’s and Cegłowski’s writing can take a guess at who once called the other a “big ole weenis” in an exchange on this very site.
> Again, please, Does Gwern have anything that sounds as striking as “Empires Without Farms: The Case of Venice” or was that example a tacit hat tip to Brett Devereaux’s work?
I don’t quite see the link to Devereaux here. But, if anything, I think Devereaux is not at all similar to the writing style in the “Empire without farms” thing here. On ACOUP, he just bluntly tells you what the plan is and then executes it. He does engaging content and funny stuff, but it is sprinkled throughout the text rather than being a gimmicky hook to draw the reader in. For example,
Starts out with one paragraph about where we are in the series of blog posts and a super zoomed out description of what the series is about.
Then a paragraph about the fact that he had been planning an alternative ordering for the blog posts. If I don’t already care, that’s not going to make me care.
Then we finally get a direct no-frills statement describing the specific question to be answered in this post. It’s blunt and it doesn’t ask a “get ready for a surprise” type question.
I like it. This is a confident and adult writing style. To me,
“Venice ruled half the Mediterranean. And yet… it had no farms. How do you have an empire without farms?”
Comes off as an author a trying to convince the reader that they have something clever to say. Almost always this is the result of worrying too much about style.
IMO, the best way to come up with a clever phrasing is to start by writing down a direct version first, to figure out what you really want to say. Then, just don’t write a clever phrasing, the reader will appreciate your respect for their time.
You’re right. I was just riffing on the implied subject matter based on the title of Gwern's imaginary essay and how it reminds me of something that Devereaux would write about. In asking if he had anything that sounds as striking as the title that’s as far as I was taking the link between the two.
The ‘serialized’ voice that Devereaux uses works. Especially when you start from the beginning. I only hopped around a few posts while browsing his archive, but what I’m imagining is from the first post in 2019 all the way until the more recent one you shared, is an ongoing conversation. [1] Or something like a tour (“Welcome to my collection!”). Confident is a good way to describe the style. I like how I feel immediately orientated about the subject matter and the context surrounding how the writing came about.
Here’s a similar introduction from 2022:
> This week we’re going to start tackling a complex and much debated question: ‘how bad was the fall of Rome (in the West)?’ This was the topic that won the vote among the patrons of the ACOUP Senate. The original questions here were ‘what caused the loss of state capacity during the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West’ and ‘how could science fiction better reflect such a collapse or massive change?’ By way of answer, I want to boil those questions down into something a bit more direct: how bad was the fall of Rome in the West?
I deliberately sought out the introduction of an essay that was the beginning of a series instead of one that is...Part IVb. Whoever is reading Part IVb of the history of "the heavy infantry of the ancient Greek poleis" is probably too invested and enthused not to care about meta-commentary about alternative sequencing for the series. The quote above is from a Part I entry and I can’t say that the meta-commentary that similarly starts this off makes me less interested in it. The intrigue is set early on and with confidence. If I didn’t care before, well I do now. I sort of feel compelled to care. I have at least a weeks worth of lectures to catch up on about the fall of Western Rome and there’s apparently a senate’s worth of similarly-invested readers who have already deliberated that the severity of its collapse is of utmost importance this week.
`Jach madę a comment elsewhere about how “style is more important when you want to reach someone who hasn't heard of you.” [2] The thing is that in Devereaux’s case most of the essays that I’ve found begin with this ‘casual professorial’ sort of tone. I’m meandering and I don’t want to conclude all of this with a point that misinterprets your own to forge the upper-hand in an argument that doesn’t exist.
Referring back to the sample “Farm” essay:
> Venice ruled half the Mediterranean. And yet… it had no farms. How do you have an empire without farms?
I don’t think that this is cleverly phrased or that it's a set up for something clever later on. At least I don’t think so if we’re using the word in a way that evokes strokes of ingenuity and not with a negative connotation, like ‘trite’ or ’slick’. It may be ‘clever’ in a sense like “This sounds like the intro from a page straight of a pop history NYT best seller”. I could go with that. Yeah, it is indicative of something I probably wouldn’t care to read not only because it comes across as ‘clever’, but more so unsophisticated. Let us bear in mind however, that this is a softball introduction used to make a point. It looks like neither of us are convinced that it does so successfully anyhow.
Devereaux’s second post, and first essay on acoup.blog start off:
> Evaluating armor designs, especially in works of fantasy or speculative fiction, can be a tricky business. Often times, we can see a design and know something is off about it, but not quite what. Or alternatively, fans and internet commentators will blast this or that design in TV or a movie simply because it does not conform to their own narrow vision of what armor is ‘supposed’ to look like. I’ve seen fictional examples of gambesons, muscle cuirasses, mirror-plates and pectorals all mocked by self-appointed expects – and these are armors that were worn historically!
> So how can we do better assess if armor ‘makes sense,’ even when it is a non-historical design?
From what I could find, this is the sole departure from the ’serialized’, ‘casual professorial’ voice I described earlier. What would you call this? I think it lacks the air of sophistication and in media res meta-commentary that the rest of his writing begins with. To `Jach’s point it does appear to stylistically serve as an introduction of its own to the author himself.
Informative is what I’d call it. And there are so many different ways to inform the reader depending on the circumstance.
> Venice ruled half the Mediterranean. And yet… it had no farms. How do you have an empire without farms?
This is uninformative. Clever? If information is to be turned like a trick, for sure.
It's risky business inferring personality from writing samples because people can and do adopt different styles in their writing depending on circumstance and whimsy. As an exercise, read something from James Mickens, and try to imitate his style for some other technical topic. It's actually not that hard, at least to get within throwing distance, refinement is always possible. He probably doesn't write family letters or most emails or technical documentation that way though. Once you have a broader sample from an author across different topics and genres, and even sampling on short-form writing or interviews, you can be on better footing for guessing what their personality is like without having to go through the effort of getting to know them as an individual (which is otherwise the usual constraint) but you still risk being quite over-confidently wrong.
Certainly you're right that aspects of writing including style come to be expected over time by an audience, and if what were supposedly fixed things suddenly change it's usually not pleasant. Though to a fresh reader, the new version might be far preferable. Some authors could use an editor, some authors could tell their editor to back off more.
In the similar space of personalities we're discussing, I'd also bring up patio11, whose writing I've sampled for a long time here and elsewhere (I still think of him as the bingo card guy). I've mostly enjoyed it but I would not mind at all if his question-anticipating style and stating-things-precisely-but-also-precisely-vaguely-so-as-not-to-create-any-chance-at-liabilities style went away. The content overcomes the style and matters more, which I'd like to think is usual for me and how I evaluate things anyway.
The misanthrope comment is pretty funny. I'd disagree, especially considering how gwern has handled crazy person emails, but also because I'm somewhat misanthropic myself and figure gwern is probably less so, but who knows, it's a pretty bold thing to claim of someone else you don't know personally one way or another. I think what might be there for people to pick up on is a sense of superiority but in the form of distance, illustrated by this anonymous quote: "If I am superior to others, if I am above others, then I do not need others. When I say that I am above others, it does not mean that I feel better than them, it means that I am at a distance from them, a safe distance." (But again perhaps not, I just like that quote and is how I've felt of myself at times, more when I was younger.)
The opposite of orthogonal is non-orthogonal, the components are not completely independent, but it's left unstated how dependent they then are. (You could also say the inner product is non-zero if talking about vectors. There are many numbers that are non-zero.) I'd agree that there is something of an artist in an artist's works, but it's again risky (if you care about not being wrong too much anyway, or whatever consequences can come from being wrong) to speculate what exactly that something is, especially if all you have is the work. People all too often read way more into things than what is actually there. The author themself is a more reliable source for what parts of themselves are in something. (I'm reminded of Tolkien's hatred of allegory that he talks about in the preface. His letters go into further detail about what of the artist is or is not in art, intentionally or unintentionally. You could say the art itself talks about it too -- e.g. the Ring by nature of its maker is not like other mere tools which can be used for either good or evil.) For your first footnote, then, I'm in the camp of separation, and it's perfectly fine to talk of one without talk of the other, and for little of an artist's being to leak through. It's also healthier, at least I think it's unhealthy how many people seem to work themselves into a frenzy about something about the artist that prevents them from looking at the art more on its own. And again, if you're not using outside sources, what you can infer about someone purely from the art, purely from the fact that they made something rather than nothing, and this particular something rather than something else, is more limited than what some people imagine. "The Ass Goblins of Auschwitz" is a work of bizarro-fiction, I think there are plenty of people who would wish the author were killed just for admitting to having such thoughts by fact of putting them to paper. I don't actually know anything about the author, if there was any blurb about him in the book I've forgotten it over the actual book, but in any case I'd bet he's a fine guy in day to day life and not deserving of any trouble. (I am rather certain it's a he, though I don't recall his name.)
I also think it's fine to talk of the art and artist together, but it's not necessary, and usually less interesting, fruitful, or certain. But a sometimes-fun exercise in some fiction analysis can be: find the author's self-insert character. (That presupposes there is one, there sometimes isn't.) How sure are you that you've got it right? You should probably consult some information about the author themselves outside the art itself. And even then, is it a "complete insert", or a partial one, or one made of past regrets or future ideals or alternative paths, but not present bits?
While we're tossing light criticism about other people around in public, or as I'd put it just sharing opinions and viewpoints (this is not structured enough to be criticism), what comes to mind first for the three writers brought up is this: Maciej is funny even when he's wrong, pg is just insufferable when wrong, gwern is rarely wrong. I liked pg's older writing more, at some point he fell off and neither his tweets that occasionally surface to me nor his newer essays that I've bothered to read (last one I believe was "Good Writing") have left much of an impact or held my interest content-wise or style-wise. I haven't kept up with Maciej in tweet or other form since 2017 or so because I thought his content and style were repetitive and became boring (and wrong about things in ways that didn't invite counter argument or correction). My exposure to gwern's writing was IRC and LW comments from many years back, I've only read a fraction of his longer form work on his site but occasionally I'll read new things he puts out because he's still occasionally writing about new and interesting things. His style has never put me off, but sure, it's not routinely funny like I remember Maciej, and it lacks some sharpness and brevity that old-pg had. I still think it has personality, and a particular gwern-like personality even when it's in "classic style" mode that is shared by many other writers, but that might just be familiarity especially with his shorter form words.
And I still find gwern funny at times. This bit of fiction, for instance, has some amusing bits: https://gwern.net/fiction/clippy I wonder, does it satisfy your query of something as intriguing as "Empires Without Farms: The Case of Venice"? There are several ways that link can "make me care", though the web page layout can make it awkward. Is it the "clippy" in the URL, the official title "It Looks Like You’re Trying To Take Over The World", the one-sentence summary that just tells you it's a fictional short story about something, the two-sentence summary below that which says the same with a tiny bit more detail, the picture of Clippy, or the first lines of the actual text: "In A.D. 20XX. Work was beginning. “How are you gentlemen !!”… (Work. Work never changes; work is always hell.)"? Those first lines are distinctive video game references that even if one hasn't played the games, if one has been on the internet enough during a particular time then they'll likely ring a bell. The recognition of such signals is going to either act like crack ("One of us!") and draw the reader further in, or act as a repellent (quirk chungus) and bring forth a groan if not abandonment; I've been both kinds of reader for the same references. Meanwhile others won't get the references at all, it's just weird. Whether including such references indicates something meaningful about the author's personality directly, rather than just them being aware of the shibboleths and making use of them to attract and entertain a certain audience, is hard to say. Fans often end up with "don't meet your heroes" kinds of feelings when they over-empathized with their inferred construction of someone and thought they were part of the tribe rather than just making use of the tribe's signals.
I appreciate your take on misanthropy. I returned to the topic in another comment in a way I think you may find apt: <https://hackernews.hn/item?id=46760901>.
Additionally I appreciate the extent to which our perceptions on literature differ. This was an enlightening exchange.
In an attempt to retain decorum between us I will withhold speculation on the character of (Mr?) Cameron Pierce whose work you made mention of.
But it's tough to resist. And boy, am I confident about it.
Thanks also for the pointer to James Mickens. And if I may ask, do you have a reference for where I may find Tolkien's remarks on the relation between the artist and his art?
I'm going to make a gross fusion out of two points you made that I enjoy in conjunction:
> And again, if you're not using outside sources, what you can infer about someone purely from the art, purely from the fact that they made something rather than nothing, and this particular something rather than something else, is more limited than what some people imagine. [...]
Those first lines are distinctive video game references that even if one hasn't played the games, if one has been on the internet enough during a particular time then they'll likely ring a bell. The recognition of such signals is going to either act like crack ("One of us!") and draw the reader further in, or act as a repellent (quirk chungus) and bring forth a groan if not abandonment; I've been both kinds of reader for the same references. Meanwhile others won't get the references at all, it's just weird. Whether including such references indicates something meaningful about the author's personality directly, rather than just them being aware of the shibboleths and making use of them to attract and entertain a certain audience, is hard to say. Fans often end up with "don't meet your heroes" kinds of feelings when they over-empathized with their inferred construction of someone and thought they were part of the tribe rather than just making use of the tribe's signals.
I think how we experience the phenomenon you describe in the second paragraph that I've appended above—the final one in your full response—is where we differ.
I can't help but use references like the ones you described above as data points to infer the personality of the author. It's an innate mental process that occurs concurrent to whatever else I think about while reading their work. And the world is filled with such data points even beyond ones that the author intentionally invites.
I'm probably more likely to expect that these references (that I consider to be outside sources; this may be irresponsible to you) are indicative of the nature of the author either directly or indirectly—that there is at least some genuine influence behind the reference of certain concepts, beliefs and shibboleths—because I don't read fiction the same way that I read non-fiction. Which is to say that I don't actually read fiction at all.
I do appreciate how certain fiction serves as literary representations of the ideas that the author has about the world (whether they're his own or those of other's that he wants to bring attention to) that they otherwise wouldn't express through non-fiction. So I do mine the work of some fiction authors for that kind of insight and nothing more; because my objective is to comprehend the diverse ways that people perceive life and the lives of others. Because of this I probably tend to interpret the effect of a piece of literature more seriously than others; in search of more intimate and perhaps more disquieting evaluations.
As you mentioned, sometimes the author is just trying to attract an audience. So that’s not to say that all references are worthy of as strong of a consideration that I’m describing. Maybe the fun part of this kind of work is vetting for authenticity—for better or worse—all things considered.
It's good of you to beware immature judgment lest you so be judged.
I didn't have a particular letter in mind but the topic comes up at various places in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, especially in his remarks about sub-creation. I decided to ctrl-f my digital copy and I'll point you to Letter 213 for a direct remark. It's 3 paragraphs, here's the first:
> I do not like giving 'facts' about myself other than 'dry' ones (which anyway are quite as relevant to my books as any other more Juicy details). Not simply for personal reasons; but also because I object to the contemporary trend in criticism, with its excessive interest in the details of the lives of authors and artists. They only distract attention from an author's works (if the works are in fact worthy of attention), and end, as one now often sees, in becoming the main interest. But only one's guardian Angel, or indeed God Himself, could unravel the real relationship between personal facts and an author's works. Not the author himself (though he knows more than any investigator), and certainly not so-called 'psychologists'.
I'm in agreement with Tolkien here.
I wonder if you've ever read A Modest Proposal? If not: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1080/1080-h/1080-h.htm But if so I still wonder if you can put yourself in the frame of mind of not having read it and not knowing anything about it, and thus recreating an approximation for how you would read such a piece for the first time. What do you make of it? What do you make of Dr. Jonathan Swift? Do you have enough historical knowledge to put yourself in 1729 and interpret it as a person from that era, instead of our modern cynical and irony-poisoned one?
> It's good of you to beware immature judgment lest you so be judged.
A dear reminder best expressed by the second Caliph of the Islamic state Umar ibn al-Khattab رضي الله عنه: “Bring yourself to account before you are taken to account.”
I think I’ve come across both that quote of Tolkien’s before and I’m also vaguely familiar with A Modest Proposal, to the degree that after reading the subtitle I was reminded that it’s satire. I’m not sure how this will affect my reading of it but I intend to assign myself both Letter 213 of Tolkien’s letters and the whole of A Modest Proposal with the questions you presented in relation to it as homework! Thanks.
Edit: I also just found your blog and am subscribed to your RSS feed. “Hard Labor” is a nice read. It’s hard to come across this level of introspection that doesn’t go out of its way to appeal to an audience. Well I’m reading your stuff now. And I am judging you too! (Half joke).
It's a broad and simple word but it's also a useful word because of its generality. It's nice to have such a word that can apply to so many kinds and degrees of actions, and saves so many pointless arguments about whether something is more narrowly evil, for example. Applied empirically to people, it has predictive power and can eliminate surprise because the actions of bad people are correlated with bad actions in many different ways. A bad person does something very stupid today, very irresponsible tomorrow, and will unsurprisingly continue to do bad things of all sorts of kinds even if they stay clear of some kinds.
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