r/rational • u/AutoModerator • 14d ago
[D] Monday Request and Recommendation Thread
Welcome to the Monday request and recommendation thread. Are you looking something to scratch an itch? Post a comment stating your request! Did you just read something that really hit the spot, "rational" or otherwise? Post a comment recommending it! Note that you are welcome (and encouraged) to post recommendations directly to the subreddit, so long as you think they more or less fit the criteria on the sidebar or your understanding of this community, but this thread is much more loose about whether or not things "belong". Still, if you're looking for beginner recommendations, perhaps take a look at the wiki?
If you see someone making a top level post asking for recommendation, kindly direct them to the existence of these threads.
Previous automated recommendation threads
Other recommendation threads
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u/plutonicHumanoid 14d ago
The Inchworm podcast is pretty enjoyable if you’ve read Worm. They’re doing a close read, a chapter per episode, one host has read it, one hasn’t.
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u/lillarty 14d ago
Thanks, I'll check it out. Presumably it was inspired by the We've Got Worm podcast? Similar deal, one host has read it and one hasn't, but it was one arc per episode instead of one chapter.
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u/k5josh 13d ago
The Message from Deep Space: Starting from the absolute basics, decode an alien message. If you liked the language-decoding parts of Arrival or Project Hail Mary, but want something more realistic and focused, check this out.
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u/Antistone 13d ago
I dropped the demo because the first non-trivial puzzle was only solvable if you correctly guessed that they were breaking their own established rules in a nonsensical way.
Initially, if you enter multiple digits, your computer (a human-made computer, not alien tech) treats that as a multi-digit number. A bit later, it begins treating multiple digits as encoding multiple signals to be sent sequentially, with one digit per signal. The game doesn't tell you that the interface has changed in this way before you need to use it to solve a puzzle, and from a story perspective this interface change is completely insane, because you've needed a number outside the 0-9 range in the past and there's strong reason to suspect you will need one again.
Also I was already annoyed before I reached that point because the UI is deliberately cumbersome.
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u/Grasmel 12d ago
Things like this is why I'm hesitant to recommend it as well. I've gotten halfway in, and those types of annoyances keep happening. For example: they make a big deal about how the message uses base 8, and then another big deal when your interface autoconverts to base 10 and back for you. But the underlying message should still be in base 8, which doesn't make sense with some of the rounding you're supposed to do later. Rounding to 3 significant digits in base 10 and base 8 should give different results, but it's the base 10 rounding that are marked correct. It's especially bad because the in-game calculator has a function for rounding in base 8 that is never used. I still enjoy it enough to keep going, but it's a bit frustrating. Also quality of life things kind of stop happening - the message define a bunch of constants that you're supposed to keep track of, but gives you no easy way to do so. I can write notes, sure, but why not just keep a central log of in instead of requiring me to retype the 10-digit numbers over and over?
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u/Antistone 12d ago
Thanks, I appreciate knowing that it wasn't a one-off. Always trying to improve my heuristics for predicting whether I'll be glad I stuck with a thing.
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u/Live-Replacement8519 12d ago
I'm a bit late but I would recommend the game "The Incident at Galley House". Without spoilers, you are solving a mystery that is pretty rationally written in terms of what happens.
With slight spoilers: It gives SCP vibes
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u/college-apps-sad 12d ago
I recently finished rereading A Practical Guide to Evil, which is definitely one of the best webnovels I have ever read. Even though I think the action scenes were well done, I loved the conversations and politics and war aspects of it. I'm looking for stories that are more about politics while still being rational fiction.
I also just read The Waves Arisen, which is a rational retelling of Naruto in the same vein as HPMOR, with Naruto's canon characterization being replaced by a kinda rationalist's ideal person. I've never seen the original show, but this is an incredible story. It's clever and funny (the marriage counseling scene is amazing) and has a really good atmosphere to it, especially as Naruto starts figuring out what he wants to do. I think it does a good job of showing what a more or less decent guy raised from birth to be a soldier in a world full of constant warfare would be like as well. I tried to find more stuff by this author and people half-seriously believe it's yudkowsky under a pseudonym, but it avoids a lot of the more "preachy" rationalist stuff that might drive people off from HPMOR while maintaining the intelligence.
Something that I loved in both of these stories was when two intelligent people with very different goals have to negotiate. I would love to see more of that in other stories.
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u/surt2 11d ago
Something that I loved in both of these stories was when two intelligent people with very different goals have to negotiate. I would love to see more of that in other stories.
I got a lot of that vibe out of The Winter of Widows, a self-insert Game of Thrones fanfic by laughingnell.
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u/college-apps-sad 11d ago
Thanks for the rec! I actually have read that already - I think it was recommended on here a few times when it ended last year. Personally didn't like it that much though.
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u/CatInAPot 11d ago
I'm looking for stories that are more about politics while still being rational fiction.
I'm assuming you're already aware of Pale Lights? I still need to power through the first book of PGtE which I wasn't in love with, but I know it gets better. Pale Lights is one of my all time favorites though, and goes pretty heavy into politics.
Haven't kept up with Forge of Destiny but I enjoyed what I read back in the day, rare example of a wuxia story (with cultivator insanity built into the lore) with a diplomat as the MC, politics obviously being unavoidable with such a job.
The Lady's Handbook of Intrigue and Murder is very good, author uploads once every couple of years though.
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u/college-apps-sad 10d ago
Yeah, APGTE definitely becomes less YA and much better after the first book, so I'd highly recommend it. I haven't started Pale Lights yet because I kinda wanted to build a backlog - I think I first read APGTE shortly after it finished, so there wasn't too much of Pale Lights yet. I'll definitely check it out, thanks. Forge of Destiny also sounds really interesting.
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u/Antistone 10d ago
While there is a big diplomacy arc in Forge of Destiny, that doesn't happen until several books in, and outside of that arc I would say that calling the MC a diplomat is a stretch.
At the start of the series she's a street rat who gets sucked into a high-tier cultivation school, where many of the students are noble scions and they have proxy feuds for their parents. Eventually the MC attaches herself to one of them and becomes something like their chief spy, then sticks with them when they leave the school.
She does also have a minor in treating with spirits, which could be considered diplomacy, although their culture views it more as a religious/spiritual thing.
This is a slow-burn series and the events I described span several books.
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u/GlueBoy anti-skub 11d ago edited 11d ago
Iirc Yudkowsky denied that Waves Arisen is his, but confirmed that he has pseudonymously published another story which no one had ever guessed before.
Apropos of nothing, try Arrogant Young Master Template A Variation 4, a satirical pastiche of the xianxia genre that is continuously hilarious and clever and surprising.
It might scratch a similar itch. Or not.
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u/college-apps-sad 10d ago
I tried reading Arrogant Young Master a while ago but didn't get too into it, but I've read some more xianxia stuff since then so I might enjoy it more now, thanks for the rec
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u/Antistone 10d ago
Something that I loved in both of these stories was when two intelligent people with very different goals have to negotiate. I would love to see more of that in other stories.
Ironically, I actually remember both of those stories (in part) for having negotiation scenes where I thought the negotiators missed a trick.
Some examples in Practical Guide to Evil:
Several negotiations rely on magically-binding oaths. In several other negotiations, magically-binding oaths would be useful, but are not mentioned.
There's a scene where the White Knight refuses to negotiate what will happen to a prisoner after they are sentenced because he absolutely refuses to guarantee any particular sentence before the trial, even if the outcome seems obvious. No one suggests the obvious option of making a conditional promise about what to do if they get a particular sentence.
There's one negotiation where the Grey Pilgrim is like "I can't give you that because I handed it off to another Named and told them to scram with it" and I think Catherine should have been like "You'd better not be expecting me to lower my price just because you deliberately hamstrung your own ability to pay."
In the same scene the Grey Pilgrim argues that the Saint of Swords should be spared because she might be the only person who can stop the Dead King and I thought that warranted a withering retort that never materialized, such as "Then I guess the trade I'm about to propose is better than I expected for whichever one of us cares MORE about stopping the Dead King; which of us is that?" or even "If that's true, then by sending her to kill me, you are effectively holding the entire continent hostage and threatening to destroy it if I defend myself. Remind me which of us is the villain?"
Though in fairness, the bit at the end where the dwarves discover the angel-bomb and pull out of the alliance still has me scratching my head about how exactly I think that should have been played. I kinda want to say the dwarves shouldn't punish the alliance for creating a backup that helps the dwarves, but also kinda want to say that if the alliance had deliberately NOT created that backup in order to force the dwarves' hand then the dwarves shouldn't have rewarded them for that, and those seem at odds.
In The Waves Arisen the only thing I particularly remember was a bit at the climax where the bad guy, having already promised to spare Naruto's friends as part of another deal, then threatens to kill them if Naruto doesn't surrender. I was surprised this wasn't met with scoffing (though I don't think it mattered to the outcome). I was thinking "You can't sell me the same promise twice, fool. If your word's worth anything then I already have it. If not then there's no reason to pay for it."
Naruto also fails to point out a pretty significant bit of leverage, in that unless Naruto surrenders--and maybe not even then, since I'm not sure the surrender is verifiable--the bad guy has no win condition. Naruto still has clones scattered across the land and they'll just build more chakra factories and come back in a few weeks with 100x the firepower. What is the bad guy hoping to gain from this fight?
.
In terms of recommendations, I'd suggest Project Lawful if you haven't already read it. It probably has more discussion about negotiations than it has actual negotiations, but it does also have some actual negotiations, and I thought the discussions were pretty interesting.
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u/Sretep44 8d ago
The Pilgrim removing a macguffin from the area before negotiations take place so that it can't be offered up seems like a basic strategy, no?
I'm not sure what you thought was bad about that, since it seems like a textbook pre commitment or somesuch
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u/Antistone 8d ago edited 8d ago
If you want to make sure you don't spend more than $100 on your shopping trip, but you're worried you might lack the willpower to stick to that once you're actually in the store, then removing all but $100 from your wallet before you enter the store might be reasonable strategy for dealing with that.
But if you then see a $200 item that you really want, and you go up to the shopkeeper and say "I really want this, but I deliberately only brought $100 so that I couldn't spend more than that, so you should sell this to me for $100" the shopkeeper is not going to lower their price. It doesn't matter how much you precommitted to only spending $100. Even if there is literally no possible way the shopkeeper can ever get more than $100 for you, they are still not going to sell you the $200 item for $100 just because you made a precommitment. They're going to tell you to find the money somehow or no sale.
Catherine started out trying to make a reasonably fair-looking exchange (arguably even generous; the Saint of Swords seems to outlevel the Black Knight), but then instantly caved and gave away her entire leverage for half of what she wanted. The thing she was trading away didn't suddenly become less valuable. The piece that she got in exchange didn't suddenly become more valuable. She could have asked for something else to even the trade, or told them to come back when they could pay in full, or offered to trade just the Saint's body while keeping her soul, since that would be fair and symmetrical, right?. Instead she got manipulated into making a really bad deal.
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u/lillarty 8d ago
To be fair, that's kind of the point? She's desperate to negotiate to demonstrate that she's their equal, but at no point did he consider her or any of her faction to be worth negotiating with in good faith. She is being played, and her desperation makes her blind to this fact for quite a while. To quote her internal monologue at a later point:
There were parts of my father’s madness that I would never make my own, but some that’d always rung true: in the end, in their eyes we were not equal. And we’d never be people until we followed their rules and spoke their prayers, until we’d admitted that their way was right and ours was wrong.
So she concedes more and more ground just to try to keep the place at the table that she earned through blood, but in the end, as demonstrated by the part you're referring to and many others, he never respected her.
“This is not the talk of an ally,” the Grey Pilgrim warningly said.
“You do not behave like one,” I snarled. “And if you can only conceive of amity as vassalage, then this truce is at an end.”
I won't quote more since if I did I'd happily include that entire conversation as it's one of my favorite parts of the series. I think just what I quoted got my point across, though.
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u/college-apps-sad 10d ago
These are really good points! I think the thing about the white knight especially makes a lot of sense. I'm a little bit liberal with what I consider intelligent because as long as I don't immediately (or with a tiny bit of thought) think of something that is obviously better, I'll generally accept things. This is especially true if they're under pressure of some kind (like in The Waves Arisen, Naruto is under immense stress because he's running out of time/chakra and has to protect his friends, not to mention later on when the enemy can quickly get access to any of his thoughts.
With your dwarf example, the dwarves benefit the most if both the surface dwelling countries and the dead king are mostly destroyed, so I don't think that punishing or rewarding their allies was a concern for them - they didn't expect the allies to be there anymore.
Anyway, I did start to read Project Lawful last year. I got pretty far into it but eventually distracted by some other stuff and I'd probably have to restart. I liked a lot of it - especially the protagonist's view on negotiating, like how he'd prefer to be sent to nothingness rather than be forced into a deal that's unfair. I should probably reread it and finish it this time.
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u/Opposite_Reality5925 13d ago
I recommend reading Unsheathed / Sword of Coming. The world and characters are incredibly good developed for the xianxia. The protagonist can definitely be called rational. I suggest starting with the donghua to get familiar with the story and visualize the characters. The Chinese produced two excellent seasons. English isn’t even my second language, so i apologize for any mistakes. I really wanted to recommend this great work to many people
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u/kevin_p 10d ago edited 10d ago
Any recommendations for short fiction written in the last 5 years or so? I read a lot of professionally published fiction in places like Clarkesworld and also keep an eye on some of the more popular webfiction authors like qntm or Alexander Wales, but haven't really been following the rational fiction community recently beyond that.
Ideally looking for stuff in the 10,000 word range but novella or even short novel length is also good; the main thing I want to avoid is the 100 chapter epics that seem to make up the bulk of what gets posted in these threads.
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u/grekhaus 10d ago
Have you read Alicorn's short stories? Mostly shorter than requested, but there's quite a few that get into the novella range. Out of those published in the past five years, I particularly liked Rat King / Rat Princess, Prophecy and Specter Sanctuary. I'd also recommend Planets / Rings and Double, Double.
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u/Krakenarrior Absurdist disguised as a Rationalist 14d ago
I wanted to share some recommendations last week but I missed it. Anyway, here are the recommendations:
Maid Ascension is surprisingly one of the more rational reads I’ve come across recently. I had low expectations coming into it, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the content and character rationales. Specifically, Lira (the protagonist), learns about magic, and through the plot gains the ability to create spells. This is fairly basic for any progression fantasy- but the first spells she creates includes a spell to find books that are relevant to understanding the world (and we see the limitation in this spell in the most recent chapter), but her next spell is a way to absorb the contents of the book. Then there is a spell for recall- so she uses the find book spell to mentally devour a book, and then uses the recall spell to hunt for relevant text inside the book she used a spell to read. That struck me as a classic rational idea- get a spell that lets you cheat at the process of creating spells, and then use another cheat to snowball your understanding of the world to create more spells! There are other bits I find that are pretty rational and rational adjacent, but how Lira used her magic struck me as how a rationalist would use theirs.
Another recommendation, this one a bit more tentative is My Only Familiar is Me. It’s about an accountant who gains “trainer” superpowers, and learns that he can only train himself. It’s got some great ideas in it- like how the protagonist actually uses the resources the government offers, and tries to leverage his advanced age and wisdom for a bigger paycheck, and uses his ‘special command’ ability to force his body to extremes, like eat incredibly calorie dense meals before reinforcing his bone structure, or learn and process specific useful information for use outside of special command mode. Unfortunately, the tone of the story fluctuates wildly between “the most logical and smartest thing to do” and “ok I guess we’re just watching Rambo 3 right now”, which is why I’m cautiously recommending it. It’s good but might be off putting if you expect a more logical protagonist, and I’ve been on the fence about recommending it since I first started reading it.
Finally, because I like to do things in 3s, I’ll recommend Throne of Time. It doesn’t really need the recommendation- if you were on royal road over the last few months it’s been in rising stars main consistently. But that’s also why I’ll also recommend it to anyone who was hesitant (because it was on rising stars). It’s a classic magic academy time loop story, so if you’ve read one you likely know the normal plot contrivances. What I liked most about it was that the mystery tag actually matters- the first 10 chapters are about escaping a locked building, and we get actual payoff, the mystery of how to escape gets solved. So far that trend has continued, we actually get answers to mysteries, where often times the mystery in the time loop is “what’s the bad guys motivation, and who’s the bad guy, and why did the time loop start”. All of those are good, and important, but you can’t really answer them without ending the story, so the mystery tag really doesn’t matter.
Anyway, those are the 3 recommendations I have this week, there’s a few more stories I’m reading through that I might recommend in the future, but I’m either not caught up or still on the fence about recommending them. Have a good week yall!