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Discuss the story Understand

So working my way through this one, I kept thinking this is where the film Limitless got its premise. This is what Limitless would have been, if the film's characters actually acted like super-intelligent people.

The part where Greco is first getting smarter and he begins to be interested in things his friends can't follow reminded me of Flowers for Algernon. Some of the business about putting together a hyper-contextual language reminds me of the latter parts of Beggars in Spain.

The two hyper-criticals remind me of the two big reasons to seek knowledge. One reason is to know and understand, and because it's beautiful. Another is to understand how something works, so that you can manipulate it, so that you can solve problems and/or create new things. The taxonomist and the engineer.

Or to reference The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man's Fear, (view spoiler)[the Namers and the Shapers. (hide spoiler)]

Joanna wrote: "The two hyper-criticals remind me of the two big reasons to seek knowledge. One reason is to know and understand, and because it's beautiful. Another is to understand how something works, so that you can manipulate it, so that you can solve problems and/or create new things. The taxonomist and the engineer."

I think I interpreted them as the mystic, who wants to subsume all knowledge, and the philosopher-king, who would exercise his superior wisdom to shepherd the rest of humanity. But mine is more defined by their end goals, while yours seems to amply describe their respective processes.

I liked the concept but the closer to the end the story got the more hyberbolic it became and the less satisfying I found it. I kept thinking the twist would be that he's not really super-intelligent, he's still locked in in a PVS and all this is happening in his brain (of which Reynolds is just another manifestation).

OK so that would have been a bit too St. Elsewhere-ish, but I felt it got too pompous as it progressed. I guess there was some hubris shown up, but I was hoping for a sharper puncturing of the idea of augmented intelligence. And real-world "hormone K" therapy would almost certainly be less effective, had more side-effects and possibly dangerous.

I was okay with the concept, though not all that original, and it was a well written short story, but I would have really liked to see this expanded. Show us both POVs leading up to the final showdown instead of cramming it all in at the end after ten pages of simple telling train of thought. I think this would have helped with the hubris Paul mentioned. It didn't tickle my SF reader bone.

On the other hand, I *like* that it was so limited. On a more literary level. The single POV really sets the stage for the final battle between nature and civilization.

I too found it harder to believe as the story went on. It could be that I was trying to take it too literally, since the story starts off in a fairly realistic way with a man who receives hormone treatments to get him out of a vegetative state. But I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, like the CIA wasn't really following him and there wasn't really another super-intelligent man out there, it was all just in his head. Like he was starting to see so much of the world he was intuiting patterns that weren't really there.

I was still ok with the ending, but it took me a while to accept that this is where the story was leading.

I recently saw that movie called Lucy. I think it stilted me towards liking this more than I might have otherwise since it was so much better than Lucy.

I hated the ending, but otherwise enjoyed it.

I liked some of the ideas (creation of a new conceptual language), but in the end it was too much allegory not enough story for my taste. I also didn't like the ending - too simplistic, good vs evil.

I really don't think it's supposed to be good versus evil. I think it's value set number one versus value set number two, where the winner was the one who had more practice manipulating others. I consider both immoral because they both consider the ends to justify the means.

Joanna wrote: "I really don't think it's supposed to be good versus evil. I think it's value set number one versus value set number two, where the winner was the one who had more practice manipulating others. I..."

Well, I think I first read it as good vs evil, because it's easy to think of altruistic goals as inherently good whereas anything that's done "just for the sake of it" can easily perceived as immoral. But I think you are right in so far as those categories aren't really helpful here.

"Good vs evil" maybe just wasn't the right choice of words to express what bothered me about the ending. What bugged me was the fact that we were shown people who transcended being human, who could really see the world in all it's complexity, but in the end it's back to either/or and we are presented with a binary choice. In a sense I "expected more" of the protagonists and of their story.

Hope I could make myself clear, I'm still thinking about the story.

I thought it was capitalist versus socialist.

Anyone remember the old TV series Babylon 5? It set the story arc as a philosophical battle between two ancient races called the "Shadows" and the "Vorlons" (if memory serves).

Anyway these two were not so much in direct conflict as holding differing beliefs on what would help strengthen the younger races (including humans). One side thought that essentially competition was what spurred innovation, technology, advancement, and the growth of civilization. The other side thought that cooperation and collaboration were the keys to growing younger civilizations to their potential.

This is about how I saw the conflict in this story. It was an artificial binary choice, since both views are too narrow on their own to match the scope of human experience and each would lead to an inevitable sort of tyranny.

I was bored by this story. The conflict was too meta, the recitation of how wonderful he was with his new powers (even if FDA databases wouldn't be like that, even for the PI's) was boring and the conflict at the end uninspiring.

I think I may be done with this book. For now, I'll just leave it on my virtual bookshelf where I'll see it...but Chiang's writing style and themes are not for me.

Kaaahhhh!!!!

I kept waiting for the story to end with:

"...from that day on he would be known as Khan Noonien Singh."

I enjoyed this one a lot more than the first, though things got crazy meta by the end.

It was apparent early on that the story would take the path of a suspense-thriller in which the subject becomes too smart for his own good. But what's so impressive about this story is how Chiang has managed to write (in such detail!) about how a human mind would operate and how thought would evolve if unlocked beyond its limits (like, how we're supposedly using only a small fraction of the brain's capability). By the time that Leon was rambling on about creating a new language due to our accepted mode of communication being too crude, I began to become really impressed. It takes a special kind of imagination to fill in the massive gaps in the human mind that no one has yet to fathom and understand.

One thing about this story though: It feels at the same time too short and too long. Let me explain.

On one hand, I think that the middle third of the story bogs it down and an argument could be made that it should have been considerably condensed. The first third of the story contains a lot of narrative forward movement, but the middle third is primarily concerned with the protagonist describing and rambling about the improvements of his enhanced mind. A lot of it breaks the "rule" of "show, don't tell" and it halts the forward momentum of the story.

On the other hand, one could also make the argument that everything in the story concerning Leon describing his mind's enhancements could be expanded to actually show these improvements in action / in a practical setting - thus realizing the concepts touched upon in more detail and potentially lengthing "Understand" into the size of a novel.

Either way, even though I'm really impressed by the concepts and ideas presented in this story, its current format doesn't seem to complement its content / narrative structure too well.

terpkristin wrote: "I think I may be done with this book. For now, I'll just leave it on my virtual bookshelf where I'll see it...but Chiang's writing style and themes are not for me."

I actually am done with this book, but I agree with your summary. While I thought Story of Your Life was brilliant and I thought Divide by Zero was ok, they were the only stories in this collection that I enjoyed and I don't think I'll be reading mode of this author.

An interesting take on The Singularity. Greco as the human Skynet. Plus a spy-vs-spy battle between telepaths! Two jaw dropping stories to open the collection.

For those who are curious, here is a very concise explanation of written by Raymond Smullyan.

I found the story interesting up until the end when I realized that he had lifted the conflict straight from Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, in which there are vignettes of two characters, one who has a record player that will that gets destroyed by records brought by another character in the act of playing them. They go through a back and forth including a process of scanning the record before its played (which destroys the scanning mechanism and the player). In short, it is a direct parallel to the language as a weapon idiom which attacks the analysis.

Or in other words, a restatement of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem (or the contrapositive, if I have that right).

Rochelle wrote: ". But I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, like the CIA wasn't really following him and there wasn't really another super-intelligent man out there, it was all just in his head. Like he was starting to see so much of the world he was intuiting patterns that weren't really there.
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I expected the shoe to drop when he started ordering the parts he needed for his last injection. To me, it didn't sound like Greco was taking enough steps to avoid being tracked at that point.

I loved this story. As you say it went from a Flowers for Algernon beginning to a Gödel, Escher, Bach ending. I think that's brilliant personally. The smooth way in which he transitioned Greco's monologue from 'just a guy' to 'supergenius' was impressive because I never saw it happen. It just happened.

My only issue was why the genius would inevitably become a recluse and then he solves that by bringing in a another genius who wants to help humanity.

On a side note I didn't look at it as good vs. evil, but rather two viewpoints you can project your own evaluation on. The genius who wants to help humanity can easily be portrayed as a tyrant who wants to force humanity to enact *his* idea of the good without giving them choice.

This story, like the previous one (Tower of Babylon) started off really interesting and then left me disappointed. I found that by the middle I was glazing over the descriptions of what he was thinking and I ended up not caring what happened at the end. I think I would have rather read about the final character and what he was doing with his knowledge instead.

As Chiang mentions in the endnotes this was the first story of his that he published. As such it is was not much of a surprise that this is less accomplished than some of his later stories that I read in terms, purely of his writing style.

There is the development of a certain elegance in sentence construction and phrasing that is developing here to the heights it reaches in some of his more recent stories such as Hell is the Absence of God.

There are a few parts of his writing style that I am not a fan of and these are clear, even from the first story. I do not get too involved in the show vs tell type arguments but I do take that view that writers should always balance efficiency with entertainment and elegance. He very much always states what is going on in characters minds and it often veers to the dull/one dimensional - and less succeptable to multiple interpretations and other richness. The characterisation is fairly flat/ uninteresting and the dialog works perfectly to push the story forward but it is kind of dull/ one dimensional.

What works really well in the story is the ideas and the way that Chiang plays with them in the story. Like some of his later stories its a real theater of ideas and big SF concepts handled in a compelling fresh feeling way. I feel any story that sticks with you after reading is a success and in that way "Understand" certainly succeeds and encourages me to read the rest of the collection. As a writer Chiang has many strengths but his shortcomings frustrate me and I find I need to give a bit of distance between the stories.

SF movies, stories and novels have much more interest in super intelligence and developed intelligence than I do but any story that presents the idea in a way that is as engaging as this works for me.

Steve wrote: "...I realized that he had lifted the conflict straight from Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid"

I've heard that book recommended a number of times. Just how dense is it?

It's very dense. If you're a math, computer science, or philosophy geek, it's addictive. Otherwise, it's approachable in spells. Although not so much into metalogic, the The Mind's I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul is more accessible.

Joanna wrote: "Steve wrote: "...I realized that he had lifted the conflict straight from Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid"

I've heard that book recommended a number of times. Just how dense is it?"

The prose is clear so each chunk of pages is comparatively accessible but keeping it all straight is ... challenging. I got about a third of the way through and was fascinated by it but then had to put it down for a couple of weeks to study for tests and then was never able to pick it up again.

Per Steve's point maybe I just wasn't enough of a math, computer or philosophy geek -- though I did make it though linear algebra and multivariable calculus and was a political philosophy major so ... yeah, dense ;)

I really liked the structure of this story. I know a lot of people criticize it for being very expository towards the end but for me it works.

We kind of get strapped inside the head of a person undergoing exponential growth in intelligence. As you go through the story it gets exponentially more dense and expository. Maybe that wasn't a great choice for a lot of people but it fits in with the parabolic roller-coaster ride that is this short story and I loved it.

Has anyone read Lexicon? The ending reminded me strongly of that book. The idea that words can be used to get past the consensus mind and plant suggestions or commands.

That's the key element of Snow Crash - that people can be programmed with the right language.