I wouldn’t mind a complete recording of my life at all times, provided I get to determine who has access to what. Would end a lot of I never said that arguments in my house.
In my graduate engineering program you could always tell who came from high caste families and who came from low caste families by how they performed in the lab.
My grad program had an advanced math sequence that was traditionally numerical methods for solving PDE’s and boundary value problems. Except my year, a visiting professor made it infinite series solutions using laplace transforms. Because why would you want an inexact numerical solution when you could have an exact solution to whatever degree of accuracy you need. Line integrals have their own special place in hell.
The only thing that could possibly be worse than the BH KJA books covering that era would be a Hollywood rendition of those same books made to capitalize on the success of Dune Part I, II, and III.
Agreed, and also: what's with the obsession with filling every possible gap in stories, leaving nothing to the imagination?
I remember when the Butlerian Jihad and the Clone Wars from Star Wars were complete mysteries. We readers and watchers were left mostly with our imaginations. My own feelings about the Clone Wars, mentioned off hand in the original Star Wars, turned out to be way better than the pedestrian stuff that George Lucas later concocted. And the less said about Brian Herbert's books, the better.
I get why the industry must rehash and fill every possible gap: it makes business sense, and they are risk averse for blockbusters.
But the fans? Why do nerds want everything spelled out for them? It boggles the mind.
> But the fans? Why do nerds want everything spelled out for them? It boggles the mind.
Because it's enjoyable when done well. As a teenager I read LOTR, and noticed all the references to the larger mythos Tolkien had worked on - references to Fëanor, Elbereth, Valinor, and so on. Those were very intriguing, and the greatest joy I've ever had reading a book was when I finally read the Silmarillion and got to see what those things were all about. I concede that filling out the world can be done poorly (though I haven't read the Brian Herbert stuff and can't comment on whether he did a good job). But when done well, it is truly magical to have those elements in the background of the story take on a life and detail of their own.
Good point on Tolkien, though I would argue it's different because the Silmarillion was written for his own satisfaction, not his fans, and actually it was The Lord of the Rings which was initially written as "another Hobbit story" (though the story later "grew in the telling").
I think a more suitable example of what I find annoying is the extra material for the small and big screens, such as The Hobbit movies, suffering from movie elephantiasis; and The Rings of Power, which (over)explain and show the past of characters such as Galadriel, Elrond, and Sauron's rise to power, which in my opinion are best left as the ancient past of LotR (and maybe belong in the Silmarillion, but do note the latter is not as expository as the TV show). And does anybody really think The Hunt for Gollum was necessary?
Yet, if they make them, it's because they are sure fans will lap it up. To be honest I consider this need for endless "filling in the gaps" a sign of immaturity.
There's nothing left for your imagination to fill in if there's official content (or expanded universe stuff) making it explicit for you.
As an example, nothing George Lucas did compares to what I wondered about the mysterious clone wars back when I watched (and rewatched) Star Wars. Lucas effectively "filled in the gaps", leaving nothing to my imagination. That what he did envision turned out to be pedestrian only added insult to injury, but now I cannot unwatch his prequels.
There's a similar phenomenon to when you read a book and imagine the characters and even situations mentioned off hand in the text, and then someone makes a movie out of it and makes it explicit and locks in specific actors and CGI-filled situations for whatever you imagined in your mind. You may or may not like it, but your own imagination gets stifled.
For things like "The Hunt of Gollum" it becomes downright bizarre. Whatever became of Gollum as he crawled towards Mordor, tracked by Aragorn and later mentioned by Gandalf, is such a minor footnote; definitely something for your imagination. Tolkien definitely didn't think it warranted even a short story. But no, they must make a movie out of it, because why not; the fans will lap it up even if it garners bad reviews.
As I mentioned in another comment, and there's no polite way of saying this, the nerdy need to know "what really happened" in excruciating detail (not to speculate, but to know) is a sign of immaturity. Art, even pop art, thrives as much in the known as in the unknown. To want to cast light into every single detail and "make it official" is a mistake. Though of course publishers and studios salivate at the chance of milking the proverbial cash cow.
Talk about doing a freeze of these frontier models with China seems to focus solely on the commercial aspects. With the history of the NSA (remember Snowden) I’m sure the various spy agencies have their own AI datacenters up and running with no plans to stop.
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