Author’s Notes: A Dramatic Reading of this story is available. This story is also available in Spanish: Consistencia Eventual A database in its most abstract form is a list of records—a ledger—and from the perspective of the client, it does not matter if the ledger is a paper book or an array of servers in a warehouse, though the latter is more usual. However, from the perspective of the database, each server must be viewed as an individual entity. To write an entry into the ledger is not so simple, because a hard disk may fail at any time. To guard against this possibility, the database makes use of redundancy. Writing one record to the database could mean transmitting a single new entry across the network many times, creating multiple copies, one on each server. Transmissions are, regrettably, unreliable, and to guarantee data parity between all servers, it may be necessary to send the same message over and over, waiting after each transmission for a confirmation that may not arrive.
I have believed for quite some time now that the true structure of our reality is based on something like the process upon which you elaborate and from which the title of this story is derived. As witnesses to whatever-this-is, we agree to maintain eventual consistency across our respective local caches. Nevertheless, anomalies sometimes arise and have to be purged. Like the black deja-vu cat and Donnie Darko.
"I am struck by a similar sense of holy terror when I look at Aleksei’s labyrinthes, especially the black ones, and I cannot help but reflect on what sacred mazes and holy books both have in common: that they are composed of passages; that they are designed to capture us; and that we become lost in a labyrinth almost as readily as we are lost in a book."
Amazing comparison between mazes, and books... and how both can ensnare us.
"The Prison and the Infohazard" — sounds like something Curtis Yarvin might write in the style of Jorge Luis Borges, and Philip K. Dick.
Oct 28, 2022·edited Oct 28, 2022Liked by Zero HP Lovecraft
Good metaphysics bring clarity, no matter how shocking they are in form; the effect matters. The form can be adjusted, improved, nothing should be discarded based on appearances, no matter how goofy they might be at first sight.
This revelation eventually eroded my puritanist atheism, over time, into something less athesitic yet more intellectually liberating.
I don't know where this liberation will end, but I feel no anxiety about the nature of the ultimate destination. I feel less and less anxious as I get closer, as I discard more and more of what I thought was superior clarity but turned out to be self-limiting dogma.
There is something I've been wanting to write but I wasn't sure how to frame it. I like the idea
of a place willing itself into existence. I never imagined a place to possess agency. There
are other places besides Xanadu of old that, to my mind, have willed themselves into existence, and in doing so, wreaked havoc on us. I just need to find the words, and the will, to describe it.
"...in which he saw the construction of the Chinese emperor’s palace, and he heard music, and he knew—the way we know things in dreams, intuitively, inexplicably—that the music was building the palace."
Destructively established opulence? A song constructing a leviathan of a structure?
Maybe we're all better off for Coleridge forgetting this dream of his.
I have believed for quite some time now that the true structure of our reality is based on something like the process upon which you elaborate and from which the title of this story is derived. As witnesses to whatever-this-is, we agree to maintain eventual consistency across our respective local caches. Nevertheless, anomalies sometimes arise and have to be purged. Like the black deja-vu cat and Donnie Darko.
My favorite line from this story is:
"I am struck by a similar sense of holy terror when I look at Aleksei’s labyrinthes, especially the black ones, and I cannot help but reflect on what sacred mazes and holy books both have in common: that they are composed of passages; that they are designed to capture us; and that we become lost in a labyrinth almost as readily as we are lost in a book."
Amazing comparison between mazes, and books... and how both can ensnare us.
"The Prison and the Infohazard" — sounds like something Curtis Yarvin might write in the style of Jorge Luis Borges, and Philip K. Dick.
Good metaphysics bring clarity, no matter how shocking they are in form; the effect matters. The form can be adjusted, improved, nothing should be discarded based on appearances, no matter how goofy they might be at first sight.
This revelation eventually eroded my puritanist atheism, over time, into something less athesitic yet more intellectually liberating.
I don't know where this liberation will end, but I feel no anxiety about the nature of the ultimate destination. I feel less and less anxious as I get closer, as I discard more and more of what I thought was superior clarity but turned out to be self-limiting dogma.
There is something I've been wanting to write but I wasn't sure how to frame it. I like the idea
of a place willing itself into existence. I never imagined a place to possess agency. There
are other places besides Xanadu of old that, to my mind, have willed themselves into existence, and in doing so, wreaked havoc on us. I just need to find the words, and the will, to describe it.
"...in which he saw the construction of the Chinese emperor’s palace, and he heard music, and he knew—the way we know things in dreams, intuitively, inexplicably—that the music was building the palace."
Destructively established opulence? A song constructing a leviathan of a structure?
Maybe we're all better off for Coleridge forgetting this dream of his.
I’m not sure how I missed this. It’s lovely