
A programmer's view of the Universe, part 1: The fish - mqt
http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/10/programmers-view-of-universe-part-1.html
======
swombat
Say what you will about Steve Yegge's usual posts, but whether you like him or
not, this one is outstanding. Not a blog post, really, more like a short piece
of literature.

Socrates once said: the unexamined life is not worth living. I believe in that
statement. Tracing out that vine is part of what makes life worth living. But
what if the tracing of the vine is ultimately pointless, because it only
points to the inescapability of death? Are then the blissful masses who don't
examine anything better off?

I don't think so. I'd rather die with my eyes open, having traced out the vine
and made sure there's really no way out.

~~~
unalone
This is a gripe, so excuse me for nit-picking, but I don't think this is
exactly "literature." It's not particularly well-written, and it still has the
attitude of an enthused amateur.

I'm not saying I didn't like the article. I did: it's the first Yegge I've
actually cared to read in its entirety. But people, particularly people who
aren't word people, tend to attribute superlatives to things that they like,
and the word "literature" in particular is one that bugs me.

This was a good story, absolutely. It was heartfelt and sincere. But that's
only a part of what makes good writing good. Literature is about the art of
crafting words, of putting them together in ways that are aesthetically
pleasing. There are people who can write great yarns who aren't writing
literature. And this blog post, while it's very good for a blog post, isn't
literature.

Which isn't to say it's not worth reading! Some people assume that literary
merit is all that makes writing worthwhile; those people miss out on a lot of
things that are beautiful and worth reading, just for the manner of the prose.
I don't think that's true, and I agree with you with everything else you said.
Just... don't assign attributes to a thing needlessly. It's like people that
listen to a rap song and praise its harmonies. There are other ways to
compliment a piece of writing.

Excuse me if this was unwarranted with your writing. I'm hoping this didn't
come across entirely as somebody's being a dick needlessly. It's just
something little that sets me off, and it provoked my writing something this
time.

~~~
jrockway
Why do _you_ get to decide what is and is not literature?

~~~
unalone
I hold very specific definitions for terms. For me, literature is defined by
aesthetic quality, and that is measurable. The rhythm of the sentences, the
flow of the actual _sound_ of the language, and the conciseness of the
language... all of that is what makes writing literature to me.

But I use literature as a very specific phrase. I don't hold it to encompass
all of writing. I use it to define a very particular branch of writing: the
sort of writing that has an emphasis on language. However, I don't dismiss
things that I don't call literature, either, and I don't hold literature
necessarily on a level above everything else, either. For instance: I think
that the _Narnia_ series is better-written than _Harry Potter_ , and that it's
a more literary series. However, I think that Harry Potter is a better story,
and I think that it has more about it that interests me than Narnia. I think
the characters are more interesting, the arc of the story is more powerful,
and I think that Rowling singlehandedly changed the face of the "children's
literature" genre. If I were to pick which of the two series to keep and
cherish for the rest of time, I'd go for Harry Potter.

So, as I said. Take what I said precisely for what I said. I'm not dismissing
Yegge's article. I'm just saying that I take the term "literature" to define
writing that is memorable for its aesthetic. Steve Yegge is an interesting
writer, and at times he's compelling, but he is not particularly good with
using the English language. He isn't bad, he just isn't good.

~~~
dusklight
and in what way is "aesthetic quality" measurable? can you ascribe a number to
measure "the rhythm of a sentence"? If you can, what number is good? is a
higher number good, a lower number good?

You think Narnia was better written than Harry Potter. That is cool, and you
are entitled to have your own asshole. What makes your opinion any better than
anyone else's? What gives you the credentials to define the word "literature"?

If you want to say you didn't like Yegge's work, that's cool, if you want to
say you don't think it is literature, that's cool too. But to say no one else
is allowed to consider it literature .. that is not cool at all.

~~~
unalone
Of course you're _allowed_ to call it literature. I was giving an argument as
to why I don't think it is, in the hopes that perhaps people would read what I
said and change how they think about literature in turn.

It's possible to determine aesthetic quality, but no measure is by any means
accurate. However, aesthetic is absolutely present. The easiest way is to
determine how things sound when spoken aloud. There's no "formula" to it. It's
entirely a matter of personal taste. However, Steve Yegge is not somebody who
writes for the sound of his language. He writes to express ideas. Is it worth
reading him? Yes. Does his writing have aesthetic merit? No, and he doesn't
care, and swombat probably doesn't either. As I first said: I didn't post that
to try and be a writing nazi. It was just something stewing in my mind, and I
wrote it down as a response to something small that swombat wrote. I upvoted
both swombat and the story itself: this was not meant to be an assault on
either.

If you don't think there's a such thing as aesthetic in writing: read Joyce.
Read Nabakov. Absolutely read Beckett. All three are writers with immediately
identifiable styles, and each one certainly has a powerful aesthetic about his
writing. "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins." There's a coupling of
ideas (light/fire, life/loins). There's the name Lolita itself, which Nabakov
expands himself in the story's opening paragraph. It flows. It spikes in the
beginning, stretches out in the second and third phrases. These are all things
that you can discuss. Compare that to "I write a column for computer
programmers called "Stevey's Blog Rants." The second is informative without
any styling whatsoever. And there's nothing _wrong_ with that. It just isn't
literature.

Narnia almost certainly _is_ better written than Harry Potter. Don't take my
word for it: read both. Narnia focuses on its language much more than Harry
Potter. That's not saying Rowling writes without meaning: I wrote a minor
dissertation about the first line in _Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone_
once, because I thought it was interesting and because I like picking things
apart. Harry Potter has moments where it sounds beautiful, but those moments
are few and far between, and Rowling does resort to clichés rather often. That
doesn't make Harry Potter bad: I think that it defined a generation, _my_
generation, and that the final 200 pages of the final book move me like very
few things in writing do - that despite its lack of emphasis on beautiful
language.

My credentials? I write. I've written since the sixth grade. I've gone to
programs where I learn how to write. As such, I've developed informed opinions
on things. My opinions are better than many people's opinions, because I've
taken time to think about what I mean when I say things about literature. Most
people don't think about how they define the term. I do. Therefore, I already
know what I think about this.

I'm certain other people have other opinions, but they haven't responded yet.
Why would _you_ call Yegge's article literature, if you do? We could talk
about that, and chances are both of us would learn something new in the
process. I don't want to dictate literature and its definition: I only wanted
to start a discussion.

~~~
briancooley
This thread branch looks like it could go on for some time.

<http://xkcd.com/451/>

~~~
unalone
It's really sad. I went to college to be an English major and switched when I
realized how full of crud a lot of this can be.

If this goes on, I promise to be down-to-earth, and to never once mention
Derrida or deconstructionism.

------
asdflkj
The pathos is there, but it's a terrible, jumbled metaphor.

The problem of the fish, or at least the persona he projected on it, is not
that it was humbled by its own limited ability to understand. It was precisely
the opposite: the world was too limited for its apparently oversized ability
to understand.

I can't wait to see those "ramifications for the way we think about things
today".

------
tdavis
Amazing piece. It makes me feel sorry for all those fish out there, stuck in
tanks... and all the people in similar positions as well. I've spent my entire
life trying to avoid prisons, whether it's a job I can't get out of or a
really long-term commitment (military service not withstanding... although
after nearly 6 years I'm really starting to feel that one)

While I can't speak for all programmers, I must admit that I have a very high
demand for adventure -- or at least routinely changing circumstances. I don't
like to be "safe" or "secure" and I don't like starting adventures that I know
will end. Perhaps that's why programming appeals to me so much; no matter how
much I learn or try there will always be more. There's no way for a person to
"master programming" in general because there are just way too many adventures
out there to ever finish them all.

Of course, the ultimate adventure that will end is life itself. Then again, I
guess that one is _supposed_ to end. Otherwise we'd never have a reason to
start truly living in the first place.

~~~
rw
Death is not necessary to give life meaning.

~~~
tdavis
Life and death, up and down, pleasure and pain, you and me. Without contrast
you have nothing. Life wouldn't exist without death, it would just be...
nothing. Never experiencing pain would suck because you could never experience
pleasure. Without you there couldn't be me because there'd be nothing to
define my individualism. This leads to the idea that we all define everything
else in the universe and are everything at the same time, but I'm getting off
topic.

Grab a piece of printer paper. It's blank; nothing there. Grab a pencil; add
some contrast. Now you're onto something.

Then again, you could have a completely different opinion on the matter. I
wish you would have explained it :)

~~~
jrockway
_Life wouldn't exist without death, it would just be... nothing. Never
experiencing pain would suck because you could never experience pleasure._

Do you really think this is true, or did you write it because it sounds good?

Life is about self-awareness, not about death. Would your life really change
if you couldn't die? Mine wouldn't... although I would probably jump out of my
window to get downstairs instead of waiting for the elevator. Death is an
implementation bug, not a defining characteristic of life.

Pain is not necessary to understand pleasure. I can enjoy things without
thinking about pain to counter it. (Again, pain is just an implementation bug.
You can break your body if you are not careful, and pain is your body's way of
getting your brain to stop breaking it.)

Finally, I don't look to others to define myself. Other people are nice to
have around, but not for the reasons you list.

I don't want to be cynical, but I think your world view is misguided.

~~~
tdavis
Yes, I do indeed believe it.

How, pray-tell, do you know how your life would change if we couldn't die?
It's not something you'll ever be able to experience. Hell, as humans we can't
even comprehend infinity. That being said, I'd argue that "life" would change
a lot if it were no longer actually "a life." Would you plan to jump out of
that window to get downstairs to go to work or whatever for the rest of
eternity? How many centuries could you live until it just became...
meaningless?

Of course pain is simply "your body's way of getting your brain to stop
breaking it" (or something similarly boring, at least). I'm not arguing that
there's some deep philosophical reason that pain exists. I'm simply arguing
that if you had never experienced pain (physical, emotional, or otherwise) you
wouldn't know real pleasure either because you couldn't define it. Logically,
you'd have to be happy all the time if you could not experience sadness, but
you wouldn't know what happiness was because you never experienced anything
else. I suppose you could be truly neutral, but that's the same thing as
feeling nothing which, consequently, is what happiness would feel like if it's
all you could experience. I'm not saying you need to consciously remember a
time you got punched in the face in order to enjoy sex or something asinine
like that.

Finally, it's not about _looking to others_ to define you. It's simply about
realizing that your "being" or whatever you wish to call it is based entirely
on context and circumstance. For instance, if I hadn't read your comment, you
wouldn't exist to me. We've never spoken before, I don't know you, etc.
Luckily for your psyche, you have friends and family and lots of other
people/things to define your existence. If you didn't, well, the fact that you
are physically _here_ wouldn't really matter much at the end of the day. Of
course you wouldn't just disappear off the face of the earth, but for all
intents and purposes you wouldn't exist.

~~~
mlinsey
I dig the existentialism in your last paragraph, but I'm not sure that
existence has to necessarily be divided into happiness and sadness, for
example. Without pain, we probably wouldn't feel the _contentment_ or
_satisfaction_ that comes from a long struggle (for example, the entrepreneurs
here probably would agree that the end result of a successful company, whether
you define that as an IPO, acquisition, being profitable, whatever, is a lot
sweeter because of the struggles and the pain that went into getting there).

But I don't think it follows that _all_ types of happiness and pleasure would
cease to be. Some things might be inherently pleasurable, or rather are
pleasurable just because of the qualia
(<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/>) of such experiences, and not
because of a reference to a prior pain. Orgasms. The taste of a delicious
meal. Etc, etc.

Lastly, the absence of pain and death wouldn't necessarily mean that all our
goals would be attained - there could still be room for struggle and therefore
satisfaction. For example, I don't doubt that if someone with a lot of
intellectual curiosity like Aristotle or Isaac Newton or Einstein were
immortal and still alive today, they would still be able to find plenty of
interesting challenges and probably wouldn't be bored of life yet. For the
curious among us, as long as there is the unknown there will always be
challenge and there will always be something interesting to do...and in the
end, who knows if the unknown is even really finite?

~~~
tdavis
Very good points, thanks for the reply!

 _Some things might be inherently pleasurable, or rather are pleasurable just
because of the qualia_

I completely agree! However (and perhaps I misrepresented my own view here by
making things too simplified and black/white for the sake of comprehension)
you still have _contrast_. For instance, an orgasm would likely always be more
pleasurable than eating a piece of toast, regardless of whether or not you
could experience any sort of displeasure. My argument was more of, "If an
orgasm is 10/10 on the pleasure scale and everything felt like an orgasm, it's
the same as being 0/0 because there is no longer a scale." Of course the
counter-argument here (not much of an argument really) is "Everything would
just feel awesome!" Unfortunately, that assumption is made from within the
context of a life that _does_ have a scale, so it's meaningless.

Since I can't rightly say that the unknown is finite as I have no idea, I
won't argue that eventually Einstein would become so bored that he wished to
die. However, I stick by my opinion that if life where eternal it would most
certainly redefine the idea of life as we know it and would likely ultimately
dilute the experience. To visit the orgasm analogy again, I think life is sort
of like one -- a very brief period of heightened pleasure, awareness, etc. If
you remove the brevity from it, you eventually remove the pleasure.

I think most people would agree that life is about the _moments_. The orgasms,
the successful companies, the broken hearts. We define our lives based on
these moments, we don't define them based on the dull in-between; eating
breakfast, taking out the garbage, brushing our teeth. Many of us, I think,
strive to fill our lives with as many positive moments as we can mostly
because (consciously or otherwise) we realize that we have only so many
moments to make before there's simply no time life to make them. If you could
live forever, would you honestly work so hard all the days of your long life
to make those moments? Or would the lack of urgency dilute your desire for
that? Even cause you to eventually lose that desire entirely?

Hell, I don't know. I'm just of the opinion that it would.

------
rnesh
There were so many good points made in this post that I'm left speechless.
This reminded me of similar experiences I've had with my betta, and all the
curiosity I saw in him. I miss that little guy.

------
alex_c
"We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year" -- Pink
Floyd

~~~
run4yourlives
Perfect. Pink Floyd at their best.

------
nihilocrat
Bettas are known to jump out of their tank if they can manage it. I never knew
why, but now I think I might have a hypothesis. Maybe he never saw this happen
because he had a covered one.

------
dhbradshaw
He should have bought a female betta.

~~~
mynameishere
A new winner for the most mystifyingly dead post:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=348571>

~~~
palish
Shh!...

... they don't know they're dead!

 _At the threshold I saw more than a thousand angels fallen from Heaven.
Angrily they shouted: 'Who is this, who is not dead, yet passes through the
kingdom of the dead?' ... Then they reined in their great disdain enough to
say: 'Let him be gone, who has so boldly made his way into this kingdom. Let
him retrace his reckless path alone -- let him see if he can, for you shall
stay, you who have led him through this gloomy realm.'_

------
anthonyrubin
I guess I'm the only one that found this article to be really awful. Having
kept tropical fish for many years -- with much greater success than Steve
apparently -- I found many parts of it hard to swallow. I don't doubt the
activities of his betta, only his conclusions.

Having said that, cichlids are a great choice if you are looking for
intelligent freshwater aquarium fish. Many species of cichlids are very easy
to breed in captivity (removing the need to harvest them from the wild) and
they tend to be very hardy. I highly recommend Kribensis and convict cichlids.

------
dill_day
Really good. I like this more than anything he's written for a while now.

------
ojbyrne
The best part? The promise contained in "part 1."

------
visitor4rmindia
Wow. That was insightful and sad at the same time. This guy can write!

I've got a lump in my throat right now.

~~~
netcan
The style is a little jarring for the web. In a good way.

~~~
palish
It seemed fishy to me.

------
unalone
There's nothing wrong with writing long. My problem with Steve Yegge's blog is
that it's absolutely not set up in a way to encourage long writing. Fluid
width, to start, means that on a big screen I get little dangly lines of text,
which makes reading his stuff seem like a pain. His stuff is written in a very
generic gray Georgia; the style looks completely amateur. Compare his site to
Paul Graham's, to pick the one source I'm sure everybody here has read. PG's
site has thinner, stable margins, and it's written in a sans-serif font, which
makes it easy to read his essays no matter the length.

And it _is_ possible to use sans-serif well. Yegge just doesn't. And
psychologically, that turns me off from his essays before I begin to read.
I've got it in my mind that somebody with something to say will at least take
the minimal time to ensure it looks good.

------
andreyf
I'm not sure I agree that there are complexities beyond our fundamental
ability to understand (that's what the tank is a metaphor for, right?).

It might just be that if we are able to conceive something complex, we are
able to abstract away and simplify it. It's just a matter of finding the right
metaphors and abstractions.

~~~
byrneseyeview
I'm not sure we can say one way or another; something beyond our understanding
may be beyond our perception.

~~~
andreyf
But how can can things outside of our perception be said to "exist"? (pass the
bong, dude)

~~~
byrneseyeview
If they have minor, persistent effects. So technically within our perception,
but not really noticeable. If some force of nature made your shadow .1%
shorter on even-numbered Thursdays, it would exist but be outside our
perception for some value of perception.

Something whose existence cannot be observed or falsified doesn't 'exist' in
any meaningful sense, but I suspect that there are things that exist, in a
meaningful sense, even though they won't be noticed.

------
gills
Two thoughts:

1\. Great post. I hope Steve Yegge continues down this path (i.e. parts 2..n).
I wonder if he's ever read Donald Knuth's "Things a Computer Scientist Rarely
Talks About."

2\. I had a betta once. It lived in a 20-gallon tank with two goldfish. The
tank was on top of a bookcase by a window, so they had plenty of interesting
trees and birds to watch (not to mention the cat which no doubt terrorized for
a few minutes each day). Eventually, the goldfish killed the betta. And then
they killed each other.

~~~
fawxtin
A good read about why they kill each other: Konrad Lorenz, On Agression.

------
kqr2
According to this link, bettas do particularly well in fish school:

<http://www.fish-school.com/gallery.htm>

I wonder how Steve's pet would have reacted to exploring a fish tube:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxMRqZ9dUx8>

------
kaens
This is my favorite piece that Steve has written so far (also, note the "part
1").

While not on the usual subject matter, this was a beautifully written piece
that makes a point on multiple levels - and is probably appreciable by people
outside of the "programmer / IT culture".

Bravo, Steve. I _felt_ for that fish.

------
dejb
Um yes. So maybe stopping keeping animals as slaves in tiny cages might be a
good idea. Just a thought. Would almost make one want to think about the
animals that are kept for food and the like. Kind of puts me of my food just
thinking about it.

------
matt1
I don't usually read long blog posts, but I couldn't stop reading this one.
Very well done. Poor betta.

------
adamc
Best Yegge essay in quite a while; illuminating and to the point.

------
rokhayakebe
This sounds like me and my day job. At least 50% of the time.

------
helveticaman
Steve, did you think of putting a female in there?

------
lst
Maybe most hackers should spend more of their real time in real nature?

In fact, most of us live in a box, most of the time.

------
utefan001
I liked the post, however, we should save the baby human first, then we can
worry about the fish.

Sorry for bringing this up, but life begins, when, well, when it begins.

Neither Roe or Wade are pro death anymore.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norma_McCorvey>

~~~
dgordon
"Sorry for bringing this up"

No you're not.

