Lawrence Watt-Evans's Fiction

Also, don't forget "Jumper" and "Reflex" by Stephen Gould. (Please, don't judge by the movie! The original novel is a supremely rationalist exploration of teleportation and its consequences. The narrator is occasionally a bit irrational in his choice of goals, but he generally reasons quite well in figuring out how to use his powers to achieve those goals.)

I'll have to give it a try, though I kind of expect to be disappointed. It's ridiculously hard to work through the impact a new technology would really have on society--just remember your own example of transmitting pictures of lesbian sex by pretending they are made of numbers. But maybe I'll be surprised.

Well, if you look at the history of media, it's not too surprising that, if you can transmit pictures by pretending they are made of numbers, that many of the pictures that get transmitted are going to be pornographic. According to legend, the first pornographic picture was taken within a week of the patenting of the camera. Still, it's not the kind of thing you'd predict in, say, 1950, unless you happened to have studied the history of media.

See also: The Rule of First Adopters

You mentioned rationalist fiction, and my mind immediately jumped to this - are you familiar with the graphic short story "Fleep"? Main character passes out, comes to in a phone booth encased in concrete, with a phonebook full of gibberish, a letter in his pocket he can't read, a few coins and various sundries. From inside the booth he experiments and calculates, manages to work out where he is, who he is, what's happened, and what to do next.

Scott Bakker's Prince of Nothing series is epic fantasy with a 'superintelligent' monk as a lead character. I didn't get an impression of the character using his intellect creatively enough, but it's quite coherent, barring a few issues.

Mike Blume, I'd never heard of it, but Fleep is a truly fantastic recommendation. I read about 5 minutes worth of it and it keeps getting better.

I'd recommend starting with one of his Ethshar series, actually. With a Single Spell is I think an excellent exemplar of the type of work you're admiring. The canonical starting point is The Misenchanted Sword, which has most of these elements, but is slightly weaker in my opinion.

Watt-Evans has used a version of the street-performer protocol to publish the latest two of the series online, essentially acting as the advance, before having them published on paper. The draft of one is still up at http://www.ethshar.com/thevondishambassador1.html but might not make as much sense without having read the previous books.

Eliezer: That sounds great. I just added The Unwilling Warlord and Denner's Wreck to my Amazon shopping list.

Mike Blume: Whoa, thanks for the hint. I just finished reading Fleep, that was awesome. Highly recommended for everyone.

I second Vladimir's "Prince of Nothing" recommendation. It's a great read just as pure fantasy fiction, but it also helped me to understand some of the concepts on this blog. Reading the "chimpanzee - village idiot - Einstein" line of posts, I found myself interpreting them by sticking Anasurimbor Kelhus at the right end of the spectrum and going from there.

What about Sherlock Holmes? Once you get past his obvious shortcomings, he's a pretty decent rationalist. Although he's shown as sometimes being cold and distant, he has complex feelings and preferences (for instance, when he lets a thief go free, because he judges the guy is too scared to do it again). He's not a caricature, such as Mr. Spock.

Well, at least that' my view on the character...

I think I'd consider the eponymous hero of Stephen R. Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant a rationalist character - at least in the first book, Lord Foul's Bane. Covenant is struck by a car and wakes up in a fantasy world. Accordingly, he refuses to believe it is real, and most of his decisions stem from that, including a rather horrible one that has far-reaching consequences throughout the first series. What compounds the whole situation is his debilitating leprosy. Donaldson created a very plausible depiction of a real person stranded in a fantastic world, and while Covenant is not entirely rational, he does live by a very strict methodology.

Isaac Asimov was also one for creating rational heroes, but much of his work is quite dated (and his female characters often leave much to be desired). Hari Seldon is a pleasantly rational character, though. The ultimate author of rational heroes is Ayn Rand, of course, but her characters are, as you say, about being rational.

I second the Gould (Jumper, etc.) and Bakker (Prince of Nothing) recommendations.

I personally feel that Lawrence Watt-Evans's books are a little too heavy on the cool, calculating protagonist. This sentence would not be out of place in his writing: "Tom noticed that the sword had gone through his stomach completely. However, clearly it had not hit anything immediately fatal, because he was still alive." Bleah.

What about Sherlock Holmes? Once you get past his obvious shortcomings, he's a pretty decent rationalist.

Conan Doyle wrote in such a way as to convince people that Holmes was exercising reasoning powers, not to showcase examples of such reasoning. By the power of plot, Holmes was correct, but it doesn't follow that his stated reasoning was.

Conan Doyle wrote in such a way as to convince people that Holmes was exercising reasoning powers, not to showcase examples of such reasoning. By the power of plot, Holmes was correct, but it doesn't follow that his stated reasoning was.

My favorite example of this is the story where Watson was lost in thought, heard Holmes say something, and realized to his shock that Holmes had commented on a thought he was thinking. Holmes then explained that he'd watched how Watson had looked around the room and followed his gaze and expressions as the doctor looked at the different things. Knowing this and Watson's background, Holmes had figured out what thoughts those things had brought to Watson's mind, so that when Watson was thinking what a shame people dying in wars was, Holmes could say "yes, it is quite a shame" (or something along those lines, it's been years since I readthe story). Holmes proceeded to describe the exact train of thought that had been in Watson's mind every moment, based on what he'd been looking and what his expressions were like at that moment.

That was pretty clever writing, but... no. Just no.

My bête noire in the fictional mistreatment of rationalism is that fictional rationalists refuse to update. The f*ing poltergeist (or whatever) will be wreaking all sorts of plainly observable havock -- objects floating in the air, demons materializing and vanishing before our eyes, people's faces melting off, etc., etc. -- and the "rationalist" will inevitably be standing there with a dumb look on his face, saying something like, "Well, there has to be some natural explanation..." Before he gets killed, of course.

Stupid, stupid minds!

Since I was a kid, disappointed that Agatha Christie mysteries were written so as not to be predictable in advance, I wanted to read a mystery series where at the end of each chapter, there's always enough clues to predict who the murderer is. But it's very, very hard after the 1st chapter, a little bit easier after the 2nd chapter, etc. That's good mystery writing, in my opinion. Not creating a solution in the last few paragraphs that's impossible to predict in advance, because its not grounded in any of the prior clues.

My guess is that most readers don't care that much about the sort of rationality that Eliezer wants characters to have. Likewise, most people (even well-educated smart people) aren't much interested in having protracted, high-quality rational discourse. I don't think people can really be faulted for not having this interest.

"Maybe that's the main reason we don't see many realistic rationalists in fiction." Are you just referring to SF&F? Outside genre fiction, most stories don't involve the sort of technologies or fantasy elements that you discuss here. Instead, stories focus on mundane human relationships. There are characters who are sensitive and adroit in the way they interact with other people. They are thoughtful and successful in the way they conduct their lives. They achieve their goals and flourish due to prudent decision making and diligence. It seems to me that they are more "rational" in an important sense than statisticians who know all about Bayesian inference and selection effects but are completely unable to organize their lives in such a way that they flourish. (Such people know a lot about formal rationality while leading grossly unsatisfying lives---no good friends, bad relations with family, and jobs they hate).

According to Norvig, Holmes is a Bayesian. Though I think it would be cool if there were a mystery story whose sleuth-protagonist made explicit use of stats and probability.

I think it would be cool if there were a mystery story whose sleuth-protagonist made explicit use of stats and probability.

Have you ever tried to get a book published? It's all about numbers, and I don't mean the kind you mention. What do you suppose is the potential audience for such a book? As Bob Unwin points out, the readers of this blog are not in any way indicative of the general public.

Closing that tag.

Caledonian: Yeah, you're right about what you said, but Holmes still represents an i/ideal/i of rationality, just like Spock, but he fits the role much better.

Kaj Sotala: I don't recall that particular Holmes' story, but Poe's Auguste Dupin performs almost the same feat you described in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (and this kind of reasoning is mocked by Holmes in "A Study is Scarlet", BTW).

Hopefully Anonymous: if you'd like a mystery like that, I can recommend The Tokyo Zodiac Murders. The author explicitly writes it so you can solve it, and is even nice enough to give you the major hint and tell you to stop reading before his character solves the mystery.

To my everlasting shame, I couldn't solve it; this was my fault, and not the author's (as he indeed was playing it straight).

Why do you think these characters are trying to be "rationalists", even a misguided idea of "rationalists"? I don't watch Star Trek, but as far as I know Mr Spock never describes himself as a rationalist. He may use words like 'logical' and 'probability', but - unless there's something I don't know, which is very possible - he does not come out and say 'I am a rationalist', or claim to adhere to any of the principles that make up rationality. I'm similarly unaware of any character that explicitly sets out to be a rationalist, and repeatedly fails.

As far as I can tell, Mr Spock and his character type aren't portrayed wrongly as rationalist, they're portrayed correctly as introverted, stubbornly skeptic and/or overestimating their own intellect. Nothing more. When Spock says "Captain, we have a 94.92% chance of dying" when the chance of dying is 10%, I don't believe the scriptwriter's message is "probability is a crap science", I believe it's "Spock's understanding of probability is crap, and he vastly overestimates it".

On the flip side, I'd like to see less-rational characters in fantasy books. I can't believe in pseudo-medieval worlds where the main characters have no ethnic, racial, gender, or class prejudices; have no superstitions; and never make decisions for religious reasons.

(In some fantasy, notably Tolkien, ethnic and racial stereotypes are allowed - but in those fantasy worlds, they're true almost 100% of the time; and the author assumes that the reader, like the author, won't even think of them as prejudices.)

When Spock says "Captain, we have a 94.92% chance of dying" when the chance of dying is 10%, I don't believe the scriptwriter's message is "probability is a crap science", I believe it's "Spock's understanding of probability is crap, and he vastly overestimates it".

Oh, Spock's probabilities are probably quite accurate within the world of the story. The problem is that Spock doesn't realize that he's in a story, and by the power of plot, the ship and its primary crew are virtually never in real risk.

The other ships in the fleet aren't so lucky - and indeed they are frequently lost, sometimes in facing the threats that the Enterprise deal with later.

The Enterprise-D was guaranteed to survive the first Borg cube, for example, even though virtually every ship that attempted to stop its course was destroyed. It's the power of plot.

Eliezer: "Even in science fiction, the Rationalist character is rarely done right - bearing the same resemblance to a real rationalist, as the mad scientist genius inventor who designs a new nuclear reactor in a month, bears to real scientists and engineers."

Hey! Speak for yourself as an engineer! I'm dating one of these mad scientist geniuses...

Eliezer: "...battling monsters or falling in love or becoming a vampire, or whatever, not in being rational..."

What's irrational about battling monsters and falling in love?!?!?! I try to do this on a regular basis!

Eliezer: "It's this strange realism that charms me about Watt-Evans's work. It's not done as a schtick, but as faithfulness-to-reality. Real life doesn't run on perfect rails of dramatic necessity; neither is it random postmodern chaos. I admire an author who can be faithful to that, and still tell a story."

Ok- that does sound really cool. But why read fiction then? There's much wierder stuff going on the real world right now... You should watch the Venture Brothers... similar idea.

Thanks for the recs!!!!

Seconding Phil Goetz here. I might even read fantasy like that. Actually, Tale of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin probably counts, and I do read it.

Caledonian--You forget that in the first encounter with the Borg, they were saved by a shameless deus ex, in which an established character (Q) was made to do openly what writers normally do by contrivance. Don't know whether it's good writing, but it's not as bad as some of the "three thousand, seven hundred and twenty to one!" successes that appear in fiction.

That's a very fair point, The Uncredible Hallq. But keep in mind that the contact with the Borg was a deux ex in itself. Neither side would have known of the other for centuries without Q's interference.

The Battle of Wolf 359 demonstrated what the odds of surviving a Borg incursion actually were, if you tried to stand in their way. The Enterprise survived only because the ship was crippled in its attempt to destroy the cube, and the Borg didn't perceive them as enough of a threat to be worth the opportunity cost.

I wonder to what degree the bad Hollywood logical genius stereotype has superimposed itself over the public perception of autism allowing junk science like Simon Baron Cohen's 'extreme systematizer' theory and impeding actual understanding of autism.

If the guy in Fleep was as rational for 2 years as he was for 2 days he wouldn't have ended up trapped in the phone booth

This is tangential but does anyone know of profound, joyful or excited poets who write about rationalism or related topics like mathematics, physics, evolution, etc. I am basically looking for uplifting, witty, and positive takes on a world free of the supernatural.

Sorry to resurrect a dead thread.

Skyler: Here is the classic answer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucretius

Maybe some stuff from the French Revolution?

Mark Twain and Voltaire are literary rationalists of a high order but not poets.

For young children, early seasons of Scooby Doo might be a good instance of competent rationalist propaganda.

Skylar- why not ask Vassar for his collection?

Edmund in Lear!

Well. I finally got around to reading The Unwilling Warlord, and I must say that, despite the world of Ethshar being mildly interesting, the book is disappointment. It builds up nice and well in the first 2/3 of the book, but in the last 1/3, when you expect it to unfold and flourish in some interesting, surprising, revealing manner, Watt-Evans instead decides to pursue the lamest, boringest plot possible, all the while insulting the reader's intelligence.

For the last 1/3 of the book, Watt-Evans attempts to make the eventual reasons for Vond's undoing a "mystery". He suggests that Sterren knows the answer, but the reader is not told what it is. When the end finally arrives, it is a disapointing anti-climax as Watt-Evans chooses the most non-eventful possible outcome that has been blatantly obvious all the while.

He employs an exceedingly lame plot device where Vond is so stupid he just doesn't see it coming. The author neither takes the opportunity to explain what the Calling is, nor does he have Sterren take Vond down in a more interesting manner, such as having Sterren go to the Towers of Lumeth and turning them off, or something.

Yes, the writing has some positive traits such as Eliezer described, but overall it's much lamer and more amateurish than I expected. Given the recommendation, I would have expected this to be much better fiction than it turns out it is.

Makes me think of this webcomic about a gamer in our world hwo gets summoned to a fantasy board-game world with wierd laws of physics, when someone in that world tries to summon the "ultimate warlord"...