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▲ lmm 3 days ago

> Many of his readers, even in their otherwise rave reviews, miss this. Multiple reviewers complain about how the science in his stories are “unrealistic” (e.g. strong Sapir-Whorf is “discredited”). They expected hard science fiction; Chiang was doing something different. Chiang created different universes with internally self-consistent scientific laws, using science fiction and alternative science as a vehicle for exploring philosophical progress and human relationships.

This is being overly kind. "What if religion was actually true?" does not create a universe with internally self-consistent scientific laws; it creates a universe full of impossibility from which you then pick and choose one or two things to focus on, and end up with not science fiction but fantasy.

▲tgv 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

I think this is a case of trees and forest. Scifi doesn't require "a universe with internally self-consistent scientific laws." Or, if you want to hold on to that interpretation, there is no scifi. Not even the ones that uphold our current knowledge of physics, since that is known to be incomplete.

Scifi --to me, but to many others as well-- is a thought experiment in prose. Like any work of fiction, it needs to have some consistency, but certainly not total. We can "suspend our disbelief."

The story you refer to is consistent, though. It stays away from details that would break that. It can do that, because (1) realism is not the goal of the story, and (2) a practically omnipotent God is given, which allows every possible scenario.

▲lmm 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

> Scifi --to me, but to many others as well-- is a thought experiment in prose. Like any work of fiction, it needs to have some consistency, but certainly not total. We can "suspend our disbelief."

Then what, for you, is the distinction between Sci-fi and Fantasy? I think if you draw that line where most people draw it and think through what Chiang is actually doing, he's on the other side of it.

▲windward 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Whatever definition you settle on, it would be more sensible if it didn't disqualify the works that immediately come to mind when we say 'sci-fi' despite them usually exhibiting bad relativity and thermodynamics.

I don't think the distinction is meaningful. The lack of a line is why we ended up with the term speculative fiction.

▲tgv 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Trying to get it concise isn't easy. There is a cultural, shared definition. Fantasy simply isn't everything that involves fantasy. It has some specific ingredients. It seems to me that the fantastic element in Fantasy is the setting/environment/world where the characters operate, but that setting is not the important part. The story is about the characters, who usually behave realistic (given their options). It also tends to have a historical nature, although not accurate.

In sci-fi, there's often an (hypothetical) future setting/environment/world involved, but that doesn't really define the difference. The important part in sci-fi is how the events evolve in and how the characters react to and interact with that world, and how that particular definition of that world determines the outcome. The fantasy part is the main ingredient. It's a thought-experiment.

Chiang sets up a world, and his interest is in how that world affects "us" (the characters). It's not about the "arch" of the characters, but it's about the effect the world has on them.

▲JumpCrisscross 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> Scifi doesn't require "a universe with internally self-consistent scientific laws."

Hell, our own understanding of the universe is barely self consistent.

▲alexey-salmin 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

It's not impossible from a scientific perspective for a planet to be terraformed and seeded with intelligent life by some overly advanced spices (you can say "god-like"). Or to create a simulation with intelligent life in it and to save some resources by starting 6000 years ago from a complex seed state rather than simulating 16 billion years of physics to see the intelligent life emerge or not. That would be rather inconvenient for the PhD studying simulated intelligent life, he'd better just purchase and rearrange some pre-computed data.

The difference between science and religion doesn't lie in disagreement over particular facts or any facts at all, the difference is in the approach. Religion can explain anything but predicts very little (except for sociological phenomena which it predicts rather well). Science is built around making verifiable predictions but doesn't in fact give any answers, only theories that are (mostly) consistent with observable events (so far). They can however agree or disagree over any particular set of facts. Take any religious belief and you can build a scientific world where it is true.

▲breuleux 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

> It's not impossible from a scientific perspective ... to create a simulation with intelligent life in it and to save some resources by starting 6000 years ago from a complex seed state rather than simulating 16 billion years of physics to see the intelligent life emerge or not.

I'm fairly certain simulating 16 billion years of physics (or 6000) in a shorter timeframe than 16 billion years (or 6000) is, in fact, scientifically impossible. Mathematically impossible, even, because it leads to absurd consequences such as the simulator being able to simulate itself faster than itself.

▲alexey-salmin 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

In our own universe — sure. In some "bigger" universe it could be entirely possible, ours would fit nicely.

▲BenjiWiebe 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

You wouldn't need to simulate much. If you were a simulation, you could exist right now only, and merely have false memories about everything else.

▲avar 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

    > science is built around making verifiable
    > predictions but doesn't in fact give any
    > answers, only theories
This is just redefining "theory" and "answer" to the point of meaninglessness.

Darwin didn't know a lot of things about evolution or biology, and I'm sure he had questions about some of those things. If you could talk to him today you could give him answers to those questions, and the reason for that is that those answers are found in theories and scientific progress in general.

But yes, it doesn't provide "answers" in the mushy religious sense, i.e. "what is it all for?".

    > The difference between science and
    > religion doesn't lie in disagreement
    > over particular facts or any facts at all
Yes, it does. You're just implicitly excluding all the parts where religious texts make empirical claims about reality as unimportant or allegory, because religion has already lost those arguments.

Do you think Galileo clashed with the Catholic church over heliocentrism because the church didn't understand what religion should and shouldn't be making claims about?

▲alexey-salmin 3 days ago | parent [-]

The point being, a theory only holds "true" until it's superseded by a better theory. Furthermore, multiple conflicting theories can be in use at the same time in the absence of a good unifying theory. In the end science neither says nor cares what is "true", it just looks for theories that are good at predicting stuff.

"Answers" in a common sense are supposed to be "true" and "permanent" or at least that's how I understand the word.

EDIT apparently the comment above got extended, so I'll address some of newer points too.

> You're just implicitly excluding all the parts where religious texts make empirical claims about reality as unimportant or allegory, because religion has already lost those arguments.

No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying all these claims can be as well true in a different (fully consistent and scientific) world. Furthermore, if you assume we live in a simulation then basically anything becomes possible in OUR world too, including Jesus walking on water turned into wine. It's just our simulation overlords had a good sense of humor.

The reason why we don't usually consider simulation theories is not because they're false (this can't be proven), but because they aren't practical and don't predict much. Even if we do live in a simulation, this simulation so far seems to follow some consistent internal "laws" so we can as well study those. Not that it means anything, but helps us to exterminate those who neglect these laws so it's a survivorship bias in action.

▲dragonwriter 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

> "Answers" in a common sense are supposed to be "true" and "permanent"

I would argue that answers are supposed to be useful for the purpose motivating the question.

Q: What is the price of gas? A1: The number of units of some other good or service demanded by a seller in echange for a given quantity of it. A2: about $4.00/gal

A1 is, I would say, both "true" and "permanent". Assuming it is at least approximately accurate, though, A2 is much more of an answer in most cases the question is asked, even though it is at perhaps only approximately and in any case at best transitorily true.

▲alexey-salmin 3 days ago | parent [-]

In that sense yes, I agree that science gives good answers.

▲kmonsen 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The goal of science is to disprove our theories so we can find out if they are true, and hopefully replace them with improved versions.

The goal of religious study is to try to prove that it is not impossible, not that it is a probably reading of what happened. To find some absurd way of reconciling different stories. I have no idea how you can call that an answer.

▲alexey-salmin 3 days ago | parent [-]

Well these "answers", whether absurd or not, were good enough for societies to live by them and survive for millennia.

Furthermore, even though you can argue that science can give some answers, it definitely under-delivers on questions like "what is good and evil" or "why you should have kids". Some of those are covered by the "humanism" neoreligion, some of them aren't. This whole experiment is very modern, it's not clear what are long-term survival rates of societies that completely give up on religions in a classical sense. It could turn out that societies that believe in nonsense have an edge over the ones that don't, after all this matches our experience all the way up until the 20th century.

▲kmonsen 3 days ago | parent [-]

I agree science doesn’t give good answers for good and evil, for me religion gives even worse answers. For example the Bible is clearly in favor of slavery as an institution. Other religions like Buddhism are for me better.

The scary part is that there may not be a good or evil, and the answers we have are just made up stuff.

▲alexey-salmin 3 days ago | parent [-]

Slavery made a lot of economic sense prior to the industrial revolution. If you consider "good and evil" as a set of norms that help society to thrive (as in outcompete other societies for resources) then it's not surprising that slavery went from good to bad as the technology progressed.

That's the only remotely rational view of it that I'm aware of. "Remotely" because without some kind of religion it doesn't follow that outcompeting other societies or survival in general is "good".

So in the end yes, I do believe "good and evil" are made up. Luckily, it's not a bad thing.

▲kmonsen 3 days ago | parent [-]

I do think it’s possible that God and evil are a set of norms that help society (or actually their leaders) thrive, but are presented as universal values.

I think there is a huge distinction to what it’s good for the average person in society vs what is good for the rulers, and it is unclear which one of those you mean.

Most religions are here to support the rulers.

▲alexey-salmin 3 days ago | parent [-]

> I think there is a huge distinction to what it’s good for the average person in society vs what is good for the rulers, and it is unclear which one of those you mean.

I mean it in the most brutal sense, maximizing replication and persistence of religion bearers (you can say average person in society).

In a short term religions can benefit current rulers, but in a long term selection must be geared towards survival of societies and cultures as a whole, otherwise they wouldn't have lived into the modern age.

▲dragonwriter 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Religion can explain anything but predicts very little (except for sociological phenomena which it predicts rather well).

No, it doesn't.

I mean, it does the horoscope thing where it makes predictions vague enough that people can retrospectively fit whatever actually happens into them easily, but that's not actually predicting very well.

▲alexey-salmin 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Religions are to a big extent codified traditions and many traditions emerged and persisted because they benefited their bearers in one way or another. That's fundamentally different from horoscopes.

▲dragonwriter 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

> Religions are to a big extent codified traditions and many traditions emerged and persisted because they benefited their bearers in one way or another.

Religions are a lot more than just codified traditions, but yes, some traditions are have benefits. That doesn't mean that the religion as a whole is good at predicting anything, it just means that they occasionally preserve things that are beneficial. But because what is codified is codified without systematic knowledge of what works or how it works, the preservation of benefit is essentially random with weak selective pressure acting in the aggregate of beliefs, and with a very big "past utility is no guarantee of future utility" even on the bits that are useful, because the utility of the tradition may be tied to conditions that are not preserved, while the tradition itself is blindly perserved.

▲alexey-salmin 3 days ago | parent [-]

> But because what is codified is codified without systematic knowledge of what works or how it works, the preservation of benefit is essentially random with weak selective pressure acting in the aggregate of beliefs

But you agree this must be much better than random? Evolutionary pressure on species is also rather weak: unfit specimen survive and fit specimen die due to chance all the time. But look where it got us when averaged over long periods of time.

I don't buy the "systematic knowledge of what works or how it works" part. That's what NLP scientists used to say about neural nets while building monstrous systems based on "systematic knowledge of grammar". You definitely don't have to understand "how it works" to be able to make good predictions.

▲dragonwriter 3 days ago | parent [-]

> But you agree this must be much better than random?

Well, no, without a definition of what domain it is supposed to be better in, and what the actual alternative it is being compared to more concretely than "random" (irreligious humans don't behave randomly, and, in fact, even without religion preserve traditions, some of which are useful), and probably some argument to make the case, no, I'm not going to agree with that.

> You definitely don't have to understand "how it works" to be able to make good predictions.

You have to actually make predictions to make predictions, certainly. And religion is manifestly very bad at making predictions where it does make them, and the things you are talking about are very much not predictions, they are memes in the original sense.

▲ 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]
[deleted]
▲graemep 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Horoscopes are not a religious belief.

The majority of atheists globally believe in astrology (because of the large number of atheists in China, IIRC).

▲dragonwriter 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

> Horoscopes are not a religious belief.

Saying that religious predictions use the same style of vagueness that allows people to retrospectively reconstruct them to match facts as horoscopes is not a claim that horoscopes are a religious belief.

> The majority of atheists globally believe in astrology

Even assuming this is true, what relevance does it have to the discussion?

▲graemep 3 days ago | parent [-]

> Saying that religious predictions

What religious predictions? Religions do not generally make many predictions.

▲dragonwriter 3 days ago | parent [-]

> What religious predictions? Religions do not generally make many predictions.

Religions tend to not make a lot of predictions, but they do make some (there's kind of an inverse relation between size and durability of religion and the number and specificity of predictions, though.)

But, if they didn't make any, they wouldn't have a special word for it ("prophecy").

▲graemep 2 days ago | parent [-]

Prophecy is not synonym for prediction. it is a "message from God" in the major theistic religions.

The only prophecies that were predictions I can think of with regard to Christianity were Jewish prophecies of a messiah. The Jewish prophets were leaders, not soothsayers.

> there's kind of an inverse relation between size and durability of religion and the number and specificity of predictions, though

I would question that - things like the Oracle at Delphi lasted a long time. So did fortune telling (mostly non-religious) around the world. How long as astrology lasted?

▲veidr 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

CITATION NEEDED — except not really, that's utter bollocks that doesn't warrant a counter.

But, you triggered me lol:

1.) The Chinese meaning of "atheist" may not mean what you think it means: a.) it means not following a major established religion, and b.) they have an Orwellian surveillance-state dictatorship government which very much opposes major established religions

2.) For many people, including in China, astrology is just something like buying a lottery ticket, or asking the Magic 8-Ball for advice — fun, but not something actually believed in[1].

3.) It's much more likely that 3% of atheists "believe in" astrology[2] — and the idea that a majority would is insane on its face

So yeah, nah.

[1]: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/05/21/3-in-10-amer...

[2]: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/04/11/42552/

▲graemep 3 days ago | parent [-]

You quote American numbers as a counter to a claim about global beliefs? You even cite the powresearch link to to make a claim about China!

Even in the US the group most likely to believe in astrology as the "nothing in particular" - non religious but not strongly identifying as atheist or agnostic.

Most Chinese people say they are "convinced atheists"[1] so I find your first claim unconvincing. Yes, they live in a dictatorship, but the dictatorship's promotion of atheism is what makes them atheist - they are brainwashed (in a casual, not formal, sense) into it.

Even when asked more specific questions about belief they are atheists. Its not just fear of government because they will admit to superstitious practices the state also disapproves of in the same surveys[2].

Claiming Chinese atheists are not really atheists is a no true Scotsman argument. They say they are atheists, their beliefs about religious things are atheist.

> and the idea that a majority would is insane on its face

It might to fit what you think atheists should believe, but the evidence points to it being true.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20150430232945/http://www.wingia...

[2]https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/09/05/chinese-c...

▲moefh 3 days ago | parent [-]

I don't see anything in your links that remotely supports your original claim that "The majority of atheists globally believe in astrology".

Even if you expand your claim to add fengshui, it's entirely plausible that only about 10% of the Chinese population are atheists who believe in fengshui. That would mean only 17% of Chinese atheists believe in fengshui.

▲graemep 2 days ago | parent [-]

Over 60% of Chinese people say they are convinced atheists (i.e. as opposed to being just non-religious). Nearly half of them believe in feng shui.

At the very least its an indicator that atheist and superstition are a common combination.

▲moefh 2 days ago | parent [-]

> At the very least its an indicator that atheist and superstition are a common combination.

The very least is even less than what I wrote: it's the smallest possible overlap between convinced atheists and fengshui believers: (47-(100-61)) = 8% of the population being both.

You can call it common if you want, but again I don't see how you'd get from that to anywhere near "the majority of atheists globally believe in astrology".

▲lmm 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> some overly advanced spices (you can say "god-like")

You really can't. They're very different.

> It's not impossible from a scientific perspective for a planet to be terraformed and seeded with intelligent life by some overly advanced spices (you can say "god-like"). Or to create a simulation with intelligent life in it and to save some resources by starting 6000 years ago from a complex seed state rather than simulating 16 billion years of physics to see the intelligent life emerge or not.

True enough. But such a world would be very different from a world in which the bible was literally true, and a world in which the bible is actually literally true is genuinely scientifically impossible. You would have to redefine an unimaginably large number of things and you would still have a world full of impossible contradictions to the point that nothing could be said.

> Take any religious belief and you can build a scientific world where it is true.

You can't, because the beliefs are fundamentally unscientific and self-contradictory. There is no possible world in which the god that actually religious people believe in exists as they believe in him; there are possible worlds in which an entity with approximately the same gross physical properties exists, but such an entity is nothing like the actual religious god.

▲alexey-salmin 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

> You can't, because the beliefs are fundamentally unscientific and self-contradictory. There is no possible world in which the god that actually religious people believe in exists as they believe in him; there are possible worlds in which an entity with approximately the same gross physical properties exists, but such an entity is nothing like the actual religious god.

Why not? I don't think it's likely and I definitely don't build my life under an assumption that this is true.

However I just can't see how this can be ruled out by scientific means. Our world doesn't have to follow any laws at all, this whole thing can be a bad dream of a sleeping giant.

▲lmm 3 days ago | parent [-]

> However I just can't see how this can be ruled out by scientific means. Our world doesn't have to follow any laws at all, this whole thing can be a bad dream of a sleeping giant.

If you took that hypothesis seriously you'd still be able to apply predictions and laws. Giving up on trying to understand it is what's unscientific.

▲IAmBroom 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> You can't, because the beliefs are fundamentally unscientific and self-contradictory.

You mean, like those silly science fiction stories where FTL travel is possible? Or time travel?

▲lmm 2 days ago | parent [-]

> You mean, like those silly science fiction stories where FTL travel is possible? Or time travel?

FTL or time travel are not necessarily unscientific - we know that relativity permits CTCs to exist, they're something that can be explored rigorously and scientifically. Even for stories that adopt decidedly unscientific handwave versions, one dropped stitch won't necessarily unravel the whole garment, especially when it's not the focus - if you're telling a story about life on Omicron Persei 3, how one gets to Omicron Persei 3 may well be beside the point. But yes if a story is full of things like that, even for things that are the focus of the story, then it's not science fiction.