Before I reach my enemy, bring me some heads(samkriss.substack.com)
samkriss.substack.com
Before I reach my enemy, bring me some heads
https://samkriss.substack.com/p/before-i-reach-my-enemy-bring-me
49 comments
>Reading a book for a second time years after the first can unearth a completely different story, like revisiting a city you haven’t visited for years, but in the case of reading only one of you has changed.
So true! I most felt this with Neal Stephenson's Seveneves. The first time through, I was interested and engaged in the space procedural part but the wacky Stephenson bit at the end lost me. The second time I read, I was constantly dreading the events of the first few acts, but strongly engaged in the high concept section at the end.
So true! I most felt this with Neal Stephenson's Seveneves. The first time through, I was interested and engaged in the space procedural part but the wacky Stephenson bit at the end lost me. The second time I read, I was constantly dreading the events of the first few acts, but strongly engaged in the high concept section at the end.
I came here to quote the same passage, except in my case, to agree with it.
It struck me as an excellent description of how it feels for me now to pick up a book, at least before I manage to stay with it long enough to settle into it and experience the multisensory panorama you speak of. Books are no less potent now, for me, but they are more impenetrable; there's a thicker shell of resistance to break through before I can have that experience; and Sam Kriss's words here describe it exactly.
It struck me as an excellent description of how it feels for me now to pick up a book, at least before I manage to stay with it long enough to settle into it and experience the multisensory panorama you speak of. Books are no less potent now, for me, but they are more impenetrable; there's a thicker shell of resistance to break through before I can have that experience; and Sam Kriss's words here describe it exactly.
> but they are more impenetrable; there's a thicker shell of resistance to break through before I can have that experience
That's more likely from dopamine being fried from screens and instant gratification than a statement about the quality of books.
I got back into reading about a year ago, and it took me a month before I could read like I used to as a kid, fully immersed, let the world disappear kind of thing. I was looking up every minute before that with a strong urge to grab my phone.
That's more likely from dopamine being fried from screens and instant gratification than a statement about the quality of books.
I got back into reading about a year ago, and it took me a month before I could read like I used to as a kid, fully immersed, let the world disappear kind of thing. I was looking up every minute before that with a strong urge to grab my phone.
It's a bit strange that we all are surprised our attention spans have seemingly shrunk. Almost everyone has multiple screens and notifications yelling at them all day long now. We are training our attention spans to be shorter and react to notifications.
Of course, reading a book is going to take some training. The nice part is that if one reads for 15 minutes to a half hour a day, it becomes fairly easy to focus on a book within a few days. As long as the book is engaging/interesting to its reader.
Turning the phone on silent and/or keeping it in another room while reading helps a lot as well.
Of course, reading a book is going to take some training. The nice part is that if one reads for 15 minutes to a half hour a day, it becomes fairly easy to focus on a book within a few days. As long as the book is engaging/interesting to its reader.
Turning the phone on silent and/or keeping it in another room while reading helps a lot as well.
People have trouble getting fully immersed in anything anymore. I had family over recently and we decided to watch a movie in the living room. Started it up and within 5 minutes everyone was on their phone scrolling and typing. I felt like the only one watching the movie. Shit, if people can't even sit back and passively consume a 1.5 hour movie, there's no way they can get immersed in a book anymore.
Honestly: some movies are better that way.
I realized during a pre-Endgame re-watch that I liked a lot of the marvel movies better at home than I had in the theater, and after some reflection figured out that it’s because when I get really bored in the middle of one of their not-very-good 20-minute fight scenes, or awkward too-long exposition, I can just screw around on my phone.
On further reflection it occurred to me that this kinda replicates the experience of watching a mediocre movie with a close friend group and just talking over a bunch of it. Lots of movies are better when half-ignored!
Of course, there are plenty of movies where you’ll have trouble following them or miss cool, interesting, very-good, or important elements if you don’t give them your full attention. But I do think there may be a case for phone-in-hand film-watching. Some might argue that you should just skip any movie that gets better if you partially-ignore it, but I’m not on that boat.
I realized during a pre-Endgame re-watch that I liked a lot of the marvel movies better at home than I had in the theater, and after some reflection figured out that it’s because when I get really bored in the middle of one of their not-very-good 20-minute fight scenes, or awkward too-long exposition, I can just screw around on my phone.
On further reflection it occurred to me that this kinda replicates the experience of watching a mediocre movie with a close friend group and just talking over a bunch of it. Lots of movies are better when half-ignored!
Of course, there are plenty of movies where you’ll have trouble following them or miss cool, interesting, very-good, or important elements if you don’t give them your full attention. But I do think there may be a case for phone-in-hand film-watching. Some might argue that you should just skip any movie that gets better if you partially-ignore it, but I’m not on that boat.
The author is making a category error.
Epic poets adopting, stitching, recycling, riffing, borrowing from other sources is appropriate for the medium of and vocation of poetry. It's appropriate for an oral tradition in oral societies.
Universities are not institutions of oral societies. The scientific method is not an institution of oral societies. Reproducibility and falsification of claims would not be possible.
The idea that a research university president should be held to the standards of ancient poets rather than the standards of a research university is silly. Citation of the provenance of one's claims, ideas, facts, data, and methods is central to what makes a university and university and what makes the production of knowledge using the scientific method a success.
If Dr Gay wishes to take the works of others, remix them, put her own spin on their work, integrate them into her framework, then she should go into the arts and become a poet or lyricist.
Epic poets adopting, stitching, recycling, riffing, borrowing from other sources is appropriate for the medium of and vocation of poetry. It's appropriate for an oral tradition in oral societies.
Universities are not institutions of oral societies. The scientific method is not an institution of oral societies. Reproducibility and falsification of claims would not be possible.
The idea that a research university president should be held to the standards of ancient poets rather than the standards of a research university is silly. Citation of the provenance of one's claims, ideas, facts, data, and methods is central to what makes a university and university and what makes the production of knowledge using the scientific method a success.
If Dr Gay wishes to take the works of others, remix them, put her own spin on their work, integrate them into her framework, then she should go into the arts and become a poet or lyricist.
Different fields have different concepts of what kinds of things should be attributed and how. In some disciplines it's the new scholarship that matters while a "current state of the field review" section isn't considered "work" that gets footnoted.
A few days I submitted an article on this topic that didn't get traction: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38990154
Personally I think the real shift is that novelty is now presumed to be monetizable and there for must be monetizable -- either directly (sell recordings of songs) or indirectly (get tenure, and thus a paycheck). And then once that's the case, people kind of assume that it happens, so a scientist studying insect embryology may not get paid much either (or both) because it's not considered "worthwhile" ("who'd pay for that? Invent a new semiconductor!") or because the institution thinks all the professors are also getting money from their ideas.
Coming from an open source background (and as someone who has refused to get patents) this all sounds super bizarre to me.
A few days I submitted an article on this topic that didn't get traction: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38990154
Personally I think the real shift is that novelty is now presumed to be monetizable and there for must be monetizable -- either directly (sell recordings of songs) or indirectly (get tenure, and thus a paycheck). And then once that's the case, people kind of assume that it happens, so a scientist studying insect embryology may not get paid much either (or both) because it's not considered "worthwhile" ("who'd pay for that? Invent a new semiconductor!") or because the institution thinks all the professors are also getting money from their ideas.
Coming from an open source background (and as someone who has refused to get patents) this all sounds super bizarre to me.
> If Dr Gay wishes to take the works of others, remix them, put her own spin on their work, integrate them into her framework
Without knowing anything about what Dr Gay did exactly, scientists do this all the time. Almost every single survey paper does this. Plenty of non-survey papers do this. Only requirement is you rephrase the words in the original paper slightly.
Without knowing anything about what Dr Gay did exactly, scientists do this all the time. Almost every single survey paper does this. Plenty of non-survey papers do this. Only requirement is you rephrase the words in the original paper slightly.
Not if the paper references all of its sources. It's plagiarism when it's used without attribution.
> The author is making a category error.
I think he could be arguing that universities should stop trying to be research universities using the scientific method, because they've shown that they can't actually do it, and recategorize themselves as something different. But of course no university would be able to make money by doing that, because it would destroy their branding.
I think he could be arguing that universities should stop trying to be research universities using the scientific method, because they've shown that they can't actually do it, and recategorize themselves as something different. But of course no university would be able to make money by doing that, because it would destroy their branding.
Hmm. It seems to me that "scientific" is losing some of the cachet it once had. Universities may eventually need to rebrand, or face a loss of relevance.
That's a dangerous business, with high odds of loss of mindshare, but if I'm right, doing nothing leads to the inevitable loss of mindshare. But they'll probably still choose to do nothing, because that loss of mindshare happens more slowly.
That's a dangerous business, with high odds of loss of mindshare, but if I'm right, doing nothing leads to the inevitable loss of mindshare. But they'll probably still choose to do nothing, because that loss of mindshare happens more slowly.
> It seems to me that "scientific" is losing some of the cachet it once had.
I would say that term is being used to label things that it shouldn't be used to label. We still have scientific models that have very accurate predictive power. But many things that are labeled as "scientific" aren't in that category.
I would say that term is being used to label things that it shouldn't be used to label. We still have scientific models that have very accurate predictive power. But many things that are labeled as "scientific" aren't in that category.
I think that's right. "Scientific" has prestige, so people who want prestige label stuff as "scientific", even though it doesn't fit. As a result, "scientific" starts losing prestige because the label is applied to all this stuff, much of it bogus.
From the piece:
"People have a weird habit of acting as if the university is an institution of the Enlightenment, dedicated to the free enquiry of the individual intellect. It’s not! The university, alongside the capitalist mode of production, is one of the only major institutions that come to us out of the Middle Ages. It belongs to the age of repetition: the era of Dede Korkut."
"People have a weird habit of acting as if the university is an institution of the Enlightenment, dedicated to the free enquiry of the individual intellect. It’s not! The university, alongside the capitalist mode of production, is one of the only major institutions that come to us out of the Middle Ages. It belongs to the age of repetition: the era of Dede Korkut."
The fact that some universities, such as Oxford, were founded in the Middle Ages does not mean that universities, today, as institutions, should be judged by the standards of the Middle Ages. Universities claim to be institutions of the Enlightenment (and Harvard was not founded in the Middle Ages anyway). They should be held to the standards they claim to be following.
Universities of today have very little relation to the universities of the Middle Ages, other than occupying the same real estate and using the same name.
This is precisely the category error the author is making: because the Middle Ages were an era of epic poetry, therefore all the descendant institutions from the Middle Ages belong to the methods/standards of epic poetry. It's nonsense on stilts.
Forcing Pindar's odes, Homer's epics, Njal's Saga, Dede Korkut, the Epic of Gilgamesh, and the Arthurian legends to follow the rules of the scientific method, and citation, and falsifiability, and judging them as stylistically and culturally deficient because they didn't sufficiently cite their influences would be bonkers. They would be ruined as pieces of art.
The reverse—allowing an R1 university to produce scientific knowledge using the rules of High Middle Ages poetry—is similarly ludicrous and ruinous.
Forcing Pindar's odes, Homer's epics, Njal's Saga, Dede Korkut, the Epic of Gilgamesh, and the Arthurian legends to follow the rules of the scientific method, and citation, and falsifiability, and judging them as stylistically and culturally deficient because they didn't sufficiently cite their influences would be bonkers. They would be ruined as pieces of art.
The reverse—allowing an R1 university to produce scientific knowledge using the rules of High Middle Ages poetry—is similarly ludicrous and ruinous.
Nice read, quite a well written essay. I like how two seemingly distinct subjects are organically knitted together to raise its arguments. What partly sounds like a (not so) hidden praise for creative commons remix culture may I add.
[edit] Also : https://youtu.be/IeTybKL1pM4
[edit] Also : https://youtu.be/IeTybKL1pM4
Delighted to notice how subconsciously or coincidentally I have plagiarised your comment in mine, proving the author's point about comment culture : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38995162#:~:text=point%...
I’m in 90% agreement, but more than anything I just love the form and style of this essay. What a find. Thanks for sharing.
Fantastic. Anyone who comes to HN more for the comments than the articles -- read this one.
PS Same author recently wrote this unbelievably funny essay "Taylor Swift does not exist":
https://open.substack.com/pub/samkriss/p/taylor-swift-does-n...
Thanks for the pointer! I was shocked at the quality of the article. Also, having recently read a great adaptation of "The Odyssey", I feel like I was primed for the author's conclusion. As an academic expat, myself, without any street-writing cred, the idea of an oral history exposition really resonated with me.
Oghuz bards sang the versed version of jazz: common themes with a lot of improvisation. They hardly could repeat their songs from the previous day. Their were the same songs which were never the same.
The essay generalized that to all oral culture, based on recordings of pre-literate Yugoslav bards.
Whoa this is really good.
I appreciate that the seeming non sequitur about Harvard disintegrating into the steppes is actually explained by the end of the piece.
I appreciate that the seeming non sequitur about Harvard disintegrating into the steppes is actually explained by the end of the piece.
Heh, thanks - that gave me the impetus to go on reading, and was worth it for this quote:
> I think a warrior-poet of the teeming Oghuz would respond to the Harvard fiasco by cutting off the heads of everyone involved and then carting away all their stuff, and it would be hard to disagree with him.
(Obviously I don't agree this is the right approach to the situation, but I agree that is what a warrior-poet would do)
> I think a warrior-poet of the teeming Oghuz would respond to the Harvard fiasco by cutting off the heads of everyone involved and then carting away all their stuff, and it would be hard to disagree with him.
(Obviously I don't agree this is the right approach to the situation, but I agree that is what a warrior-poet would do)
For anyone who hasn't read Sam Kriss before and enjoyed this piece, I'd also highly recommend his essay 'the internet is already over': https://samkriss.substack.com/p/the-internet-is-already-over
I wish it was possible to downvote a flag, that gives negative karma to the flaggers..
I'd never heard of Sam Kriss before, but the writing drew me in and I spent a few minutes looking through his stuff. I have no clue about the veracity of the things he writes, but boy oh boy does he do the writing part well.
He's good, although if you're new I caution you to continue thinking critically as you read. He's one of those people like TLP who has figured out the secret to writing in a way that's persuasive to smart people, and you can sometimes emerge from a post being completely convinced it's true, and only later going, "Wait, there was no actual evidence presented for any of that."
Again, I'm not saying he isn't good, but keep your critical faculties about you.
Again, I'm not saying he isn't good, but keep your critical faculties about you.
Agree - he writes like he's showing off, but he's good enough for that not to matter. It reminds me of some of David Foster Wallace's work in a way.
But I also agree with the other reply to you – sometimes his arguments don't actually really make any sense, they're just fun to read.
But I also agree with the other reply to you – sometimes his arguments don't actually really make any sense, they're just fun to read.
Why the hell was this flagged? It’s an excellent and funny read that finally makes an original point regarding the decay of academia and great outlook how digital media and LLMs will and have changed literature culture.
How the hell was this gem flagged @dang? One of the best things I read on HN and I almost missed it…
How the hell was this gem flagged @dang? One of the best things I read on HN and I almost missed it…
> For an oral poet, the smallest unit of meaning might have been the black mountain, the bursting river.
Interesting. Maybe because symbolic idioms?
"Temba, his arms wide"
Interesting. Maybe because symbolic idioms?
"Temba, his arms wide"
Great read. Nice to read someone who is optimistic about progress in a humanistic way.
At their best, collaborative content like memes, comments, forums and remixes allows us to occupy our social human self more effectively than a book, which was just the best technology available during the Enlightenment
At their best, collaborative content like memes, comments, forums and remixes allows us to occupy our social human self more effectively than a book, which was just the best technology available during the Enlightenment
> These revelations were the fruit of a broad right-wing campaign to discredit Ms Gay, prompted by an incredibly stupid furore over a purely hypothetical case of campus antisemitism.
To be perfectly honest, she had already discredited herself by claiming that direct calls for genocide can't be called "harassment". Note that the other college heads who did so voluntarily resigned after doing so.
To be perfectly honest, she had already discredited herself by claiming that direct calls for genocide can't be called "harassment". Note that the other college heads who did so voluntarily resigned after doing so.
The main person seeking her resignation was a major Democrat donor. The Jewish community generally votes Democrat. So labeling this as solely a right-wing campaign is denying the internal party struggle to deal with the issue and how this has created a fracture within the party.
If we had had a group of right wingers trying to climb over the whitehouse fence and had to evacuate staff, if would have been on the news on repeat, but because it looks bad to the 90% Democrat leaning media, it’s not.
If we had had a group of right wingers trying to climb over the whitehouse fence and had to evacuate staff, if would have been on the news on repeat, but because it looks bad to the 90% Democrat leaning media, it’s not.
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And yet here we are talking about here, and for days (weeks?) it was the only thing on the news. It was even on SNL which unsurprisingly tried to make Stefanik look like the but of the joke.
My point is you seem to be pretending that this hasn't been the focal point of news for a while, when in fact it has.
My point is you seem to be pretending that this hasn't been the focal point of news for a while, when in fact it has.
The point is that, all the old school media (including TFA) has been running cover for her and claiming the only bigotry that exists anywhere is within the right-wing and no one on the left harbors any hate, when we can clearly see a ton of virulent hatred of Jews, lots of examples of racism and prejudice and bigotry by many people within the current democrat party, within the progressive movement and among many organizations that identify as liberal or leftist. But it's all covered up or those making the claims are themselves accused of some sorta unfounded campaign of hate.
Now we're being told that plagiarism is actually ok, it turns out that telling lies, doctoring results, passing off other's work as your own, etc is apparently ok and totally acceptable and was "always happening". It truly feels like we're fully enmeshed in some 1984 scenario with many words having their definitions totally changed, facts "updated", history rewritten, and just a general acceptance of mass gaslighting.
Now we're being told that plagiarism is actually ok, it turns out that telling lies, doctoring results, passing off other's work as your own, etc is apparently ok and totally acceptable and was "always happening". It truly feels like we're fully enmeshed in some 1984 scenario with many words having their definitions totally changed, facts "updated", history rewritten, and just a general acceptance of mass gaslighting.
> It’s roughly coterminous with the age of the novel: starting with Don Quixote; maybe starting to collapse with Pierre Menard, who could produce a word-for-word replica of Don Quixote that was an entirely different text, simply because it was written by Pierre Menard and not by Miguel de Cervantes.
Pierre Menard was not a real person, but a fictional character in a book by Jorge Luis Borges.
It really tanks the trustworthiness of the article to find obvious errors like this, when the article as a whole depends on numerous literary references to back its arguments.
(I have made the same complaint before: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8747352>)
Pierre Menard was not a real person, but a fictional character in a book by Jorge Luis Borges.
It really tanks the trustworthiness of the article to find obvious errors like this, when the article as a whole depends on numerous literary references to back its arguments.
(I have made the same complaint before: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8747352>)
Do you think its possible that this is in fact a reference to Borges' story and its themes, to postmodern literature in general, or is that somehow out of the question to you?
Also why is "trust" at stake here?
This response is a quite poignant emphasis to the author's conceit honestly. We really cant just read anything anymore, its always some call to action, its always something being spoken at you which necessitates rebuttal or appeal to loftier ideas outside the text. The essay is dying along with everything else it seems.
Also why is "trust" at stake here?
This response is a quite poignant emphasis to the author's conceit honestly. We really cant just read anything anymore, its always some call to action, its always something being spoken at you which necessitates rebuttal or appeal to loftier ideas outside the text. The essay is dying along with everything else it seems.
> Do you think its possible that this is in fact a reference to Borges' story and its themes
I considered the possibility, but the reference was made so matter-of-factly, and the reference did not seem to support the argument if you knew it was a fictional character.
> Also why is "trust" at stake here?
Because the internet is full of ignorant ramblings (moreso with the LLMs), and you have to be aware of it and detect it in order not to fill your own mind with irrelevant nonsense.
I considered the possibility, but the reference was made so matter-of-factly, and the reference did not seem to support the argument if you knew it was a fictional character.
> Also why is "trust" at stake here?
Because the internet is full of ignorant ramblings (moreso with the LLMs), and you have to be aware of it and detect it in order not to fill your own mind with irrelevant nonsense.
I'm pretty sure Sam Kriss knows Pierre Menard is a fictional character dude. He's using the story to make a point about how we've thought about originality in different ages. The idea is that an oral society couldn't come up with a story like Pierre Menard, not that the story is literally true.
I (and I assume most people) don’t know who Sam Kriss is, and the reference was seemingly made as if Pierre Menard was a real person, as it otherwise would not make sense to reference him in that context.
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After all what is Shakespeare but a bunch of old stories rewritten by someone who lived after the printing press? And to read him today is to read a mass of clichés…most of which were original when he wrote them.
I do disagree with one point which I hope was intended to be hyperbolic:
> You’re experiencing the agony of the dead word of the book, where the future is already set down, waiting for you on the final page, where nothing changes…
The novel, to me, is the ultimate in multimedia experience, where a scene set in winter can make me feel cold, while a video of the same is too flat, perhaps in some ways too descriptive, stripping the interpretation from the experience. Reading a book for a second time years after the first can unearth a completely different story, like revisiting a city you haven’t visited for years, but in the case of reading only one of you has changed.