Slow Gods

Clair North's Slow Gods is a grim look at what happens to far future human societies in the vicinity of a supernova. It's a novel with a strong literary feel, one that explores a number of very distinct cultures, including a hyper-capitalistic dystopia, a highly artistic society, and lots of others in between. Early in the story, an ancient AI entity known as the Slow sends messengers to a number of solar systems in the neighborhood of a binary star system.

http://selfawarepatterns.com/2026/03/07/slow-gods/

Project Hanuman: information as the fundamental reality

Stewart Hotston acknowledges that his Project Hanuman is inspired by Iain Banks' Culture novels. The society he describes, known as the Archology, is very similar to the Culture in many respects. However, where Banks' books usually have the Culture as the dominant civilization technologically, and always have them coming out on top, Hotston's Archology finds itself in a desperate fight, with its survival hanging…

http://selfawarepatterns.com/2026/02/21/project-hanuman-information-as-the-fundamental-reality/

The attitude of physicalism

Spurred by conversations a few weeks ago, I've been thinking about physicalism, the stance that everything is physical, that the physical facts fix all the facts. A long popular attack against this view has been to argue that it's incoherent, since we can't give a solid definition of what "physical" means. And so physicalism seems to be built on a foundation on shifting sands.

http://selfawarepatterns.com/2026/02/14/the-attitude-of-physicalism/

Halcyon Years

Alastair Reynolds' new novel, Halcyon Years, starts off as a murder mystery that takes place on an interstellar generation ship, a sealed O'Neill cylinder type environment, with cities, rivers, lakes, and forests. The ship is ruled by two rich families, the Urrys and the DelRossos, who hate each other. And while there are separate municipal governments and police forces, they're largely corrupt and in the pocket of the families.

http://selfawarepatterns.com/2026/02/08/halcyon-years/

Excession

Excession is one of the novels I missed years ago when reading Iain Banks' Culture series. The main reason, I think, is that for along time it wasn't published in ebook format, I suspect due to formatting complexity. It just came out in ebook a couple of weeks ago, so I've finally been able to rectify the oversight. The Culture, if you're not familiar with Banks' books, is an interstellar society that is probably the closest thing in science fiction to heaven.

http://selfawarepatterns.com/2026/02/01/excession/

Chill about metaphysics

This week I had to block a couple of people on different platforms. Neither seemed able to make their point without lacing in insults. One seemed to be on a mission to make me feel as bad about my outlook as possible. The disagreements were on purely metaphysical grounds, physicalism vs non-physicalism. And seem to be examples of something that appears pervasive in online discussions, the constant sniping between these different metaphysical…

http://selfawarepatterns.com/2026/01/31/chill-about-metaphysics/

Pushing Ice

I have a pet theory about good science fiction stories (and maybe fantasy ones). A good story needs to have both a wonder and a conflict element. A lot of classic SF only have the wonder one. Many of Arthur C. Clarke's stories fit in this category. Consider 2001: A Space odyssey. Remove the wonder elements and there's little left.

http://selfawarepatterns.com/2026/01/17/pushing-ice/

If usefulness isn’t a guide to what’s real, what is?

Seems like I've been writing a lot about quantum mechanics lately. Apparently so have a lot of other people. One thing that keeps coming up is the reality or non-reality of the quantum wave function. Raoni Arroyo and Jonas R. Becker Arenhart argue for non-reality: Quantum mechanics works, but it doesn't describe reality: Predictive power is not a guide to reality…

http://selfawarepatterns.com/2026/01/11/if-usefulness-isnt-a-guide-to-whats-real-what-is/

Biological computation and the nature of software

A new paper is been getting some attention. It makes the case for biological computation. (This is a link to a summary, but there's a link to the actual paper at the bottom of that article.) Characterizing the debate between computational functionalism and biological naturalism as camps that are hopelessly dug in, the authors propose that the brain does do computation, but that it's a very different kind from the type…

http://selfawarepatterns.com/2025/12/31/biological-computation-and-the-nature-of-software/

Why I’m a reductionist

The SEP article on scientific reductionism notes that the etymology of the word "reduction" is "to bring back" something to something else. So in a methodological sense, reduction is bringing one theory or ontology back to a simpler or more fundamental theory or ontology. The Wikipedia entry on reductionism identifies different kinds: ontological, methodological, and theory reductionism. I think the ontological one is the most interesting here,…

http://selfawarepatterns.com/2025/12/26/why-im-a-reductionist/