Tag: Reality

When their fictional ideas become real, how do science fiction authors cope? [Article]

Not without feeling like all their made up work will be obsolete, says science fiction author Charlie Stross:

well, I’m just boggling. I’ve got a subplot for this trilogy (no spoilers!) which I think is up there with anything reality can throw at us and which is hopefully funny, plausible, and crazy (but in an “it just might be true” kind of way). Only now, I’m getting a sick feeling in my stomach. One month before publication, there’s going to be a bombshell revelation and an ancient festering spyware secret will surface, blinking in the light of day like half-mummified groundhogs (Secret Squirrel need not apply!) and my satirical thriller will be obsolete.

Bonus link from that article

The Monty Hall Problem and Schrodinger’s Cat [Article]

Scott Adams discusses the Monty Hall Problem & Schrodinger’s Cat, and our brains inability to understand reality at its most basic level.

Monty Hall is a game show host. You are given a choice of three doors. One has a car behind it, the other two have goats. If you pick the door with the car, you win it. Your odds are 1-in-3.

So you pick a door, but before it opens, Monty opens one of the other two doors to reveal a goat. He asks if you want to switch from the door you initially picked to the other closed door. Your brain says the odds are the same for any closed door, so you stay. But in fact, the odds are twice as good if you switch doors.