Reddit mentions of A Deepness in the Sky (Zones of Thought series Book 2)

Vernor Vinge's Hugo Award-winning novel A Deepness in the Sky is a must-read if you're interested in this. TL;DR it actually engages with the question of how we'd deal with literal giant spider aliens... and it dives deeply into the ethical and epistemological implications of xenolinguistics and cultural presentation. I've been drafting a review/academic analysis of the book to share elsewhere, but might as well share my early draft below! (Please do not repost.)

Vernor Vinge's "A Deepness in the Sky" and Max Weber's Antipositivism

I recently completed Vernor Vinge's Hugo Award-winning A Deepness in the Sky, and it has quickly jumped to the top of my all-time favorites list.

The setting is hard sci-fi, with zero FTL travel but reliable cryogenics; therefore, it takes centuries for fleets and even information to travel between star systems. What might society look like when coordination can only happen so infrequently? What tools might people develop to ensure cultural and social control over millennia; what happens if someone subsequently "munchkins" said tools? How do you preserve the integrity of your schemes when you might be asleep for decades, oblivious to changing dynamics, knowing that the allies you think you have on the outside are self-thinking agents themselves? When you're confronted with not only new facts, but entirely new paradigms for thinking about power in this context, how do you adapt?

On top of this, the story presents not just a clash between human ways of life, but a first encounter with an incredibly foreign alien civilization as well: a planet of giant spider-like beings who have progressed to atomic-age technology. How does one communicate with beings so different? How does one translate an alien language? Does the nuance of translation become a power structure itself? Is it possible to tactically deploy empathy in situations like this?

That Vinge is able to weave these questions into a cohesive and intensely suspenseful narrative, with a solid conclusion, and with more than a dozen interweaving human and alien point-of-view characters (all of whom constantly plot and reason about how to adapt their plans should other characters discover certain facts) is nothing short of mastery.

I would go so far as to say that the story is rationalist at a metafictional level. If you begin reading the alien "spider" point-of-view chapters and become disappointed that they seem too perfectly anthropomorphized, even Westernized, with recognizable automobiles and a town called Princeton... consider that not only the narrator, but the entire narrative framework itself, may be unreliable, and that this may have resounding implications for the plot. Separately, while trying to minimize spoilers, a variety of human characters think in ways very different from others. For both alien-human and human-human interactions, then, Vinge challenges both his characters and readers alike to consider whether it's even possible to fully appreciate (and empathize with) the rational thought of beings wholly different from you, without reinterpreting their thoughts in language and description that's familiar.

This concept is surprisingly close to some ideas of Max Weber, the German sociologist and rationalist. This article provides a relatively succinct overview of his thoughts on Verstehen and antipositivism. In Weber's own words:

> All interpretation of meaning, like all scientific observations, strives for clarity and verifiable accuracy of insight and comprehension. The basis for certainty in understanding can be either rational, [...] or it can be of an emotionally empathic or artistically appreciative quality. [...] Empathic or appreciative accuracy is attained when, through sympathetic participation, we can adequately grasp the emotional context in which the action took place. [...] On the other hand, many ultimate ends or values toward which experience shows that human action may be oriented, often cannot be understood completely, though sometimes we are able to grasp them intellectually. The more radically they differ from our own ultimate values, however, the more difficult it is for us to understand them empathically. (Weber 1978, pp. 5-6)

We can tend to think that the only way to be rational(ist) is to accept facts as absolute mathematical truths, to try to divorce them from our prior assumptions and biases. But Weber would say that this is often a losing battle - in order to understand an individual or a society, we must recognize that we can never fully understand an individual or society independent of our own values through which we view the world.

Thomas Negel's oft-cited 1974 article on "What Is It Like To Be A Bat" (wiki article here) takes a similar line of inquiry:

> We appear to be faced with a general difficulty about psychophysical reduction. In other areas the process of reduction is a move in the direction of greater objectivity, toward a more accurate view of the real nature of things. This is accomplished by reducing our dependence on individual or species-specific points of view toward the object of investigation... Experience itself, however, does not seem to fit the pattern. The idea of moving from appearance to reality seems to make no sense here. What is the analogue in this case to pursuing a more objective understanding of the same phenomena by abandoning the initial subjective viewpoint toward them in favor of another that is more objective but concerns the same thing? Certainly it appears unlikely that we will get closer to the real nature of human experience by leaving behind the particularity of our human point of view and striving for a description in terms accessible to beings that could not imagine what it was like to be us. If the subjective character of experience is fully comprehensible only from one point of view, then any shift to greater objectivity -that is, less attachment to a specific viewpoint-does not take us nearer to the real nature of the phenomenon: it takes us farther away from it.

It's a question that by its very nature may be impossible to answer objectively! But, again in a metatextual way, Vinge's attempt to answer these questions with a narrative framework, to attempt to build meta-empathy towards the question of how to build empathy towards alien modalities of thinking, feels to me to be a worthwhile contribution to this line of thinking. If any of this makes you curious, or if you're interested implications of this type of thinking on political power structures and public and international affairs, I highly recommend reading this book.

P.S. Vinge also raises questions of whether one still has free will if one's utility function is modified without one's consent - a really tricky question. A trigger warning for mind-control is in order here.

P.P.S. Some will recommend reading this after reading its earlier-released sequel, A Fire Upon The Deep - which raises its own questions about rationalism, about the stability of rational planning in a group mind whose membership is fluid. I personally recommend reading Deepness first, as Fire relies much more on deus ex machina revelations, and IMO Deepness actually benefits from the reader not knowing anything about the characters and their moral compasses going in. That said, both books make me want to read more of Vinge's ouevre - he has a fascinating way of thinking about thinking.

First contact is a whole subgenre of scifi, and it is one of my favorites!

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In regards to your request. I have, but haven't read Artemis because it doesn't look that interesting. Rendezvous with Rama, is good, albeit kinda boring. If you like it, but wish it had more action, read Ringworld by Larry Niven.

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Here are some of my favorite first contact books (with oversimplified plot summaries):

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The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle - Humans discover an alien spaceship and set out to find the source.

The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu - Chinese centric first book in a trilogy of aliens invading. One of the best I have read in recent years. Don't want to give away too much. Features alien aliens, like in The Gods Themselves!

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A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge - Humans discover an alien race and race to be the first to make contact with them.

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Damocles by S.G. Redling - Humans discover alien life and launch an expedition to make first contact. Follows the story from the point of the humans and the aliens. Very good hard scifi, but easy to read. The language barrier is a major plot piece.

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Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky - Humans are looking for a new home and stumble across a planet with alien life. Trouble ensues. No spoilers here. The sequel comes out in only a couple of weeks!

I'm a pretty big Vinge fan. Rainbows End and A Deepness in the Sky are both great. Just finished the first book of the Magicians trilogy and was not a fan of it at all.

I really enjoyed Ready Player one!

Some of my favorite sci-fi:

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Heinlein


Course of Empire, by Eric Flint and KD Wentworth


Quintaglio Ascension Trilogy, by Robert J Sawyer (Trilogy starting with Farseer)


Uplift Series, by David Brin, (trilogy, starting with Sundiver)


A Deepness in the Sky, by Vernor Vinge

The best way to do universal time is to simply count seconds in a very metric way and keep that duration/rhythm as a universal constant. A day is roughly 86 kiloseconds, a week is roughly 600 kiloseconds, and a decade is roughly 315 megaseconds.

The idea is from Vernor Vinge and taken from his most awesome book A Deepness in the Sky: https://www.amazon.com/Deepness-Sky-Zones-Thought-Book-ebook/dp/B002H8ORKM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1495324744&sr=8-1&keywords=a+deepness+in+the+sky

I know know.... time is relative and varies with the curvature of space, but that is not an immediate concern as at this time we can barely get to the moon.