Stanisław Lem's Reflections on the Objects of His Childhood Home

https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/stanislaw-lems-reflections-childhood/

by anarbadalov • 6 years ago

130 18 6 years ago

thereader.mitpress.mit.edu

krdl• 6 years ago

Unrelated to the article, always enjoyed Lem's realistic portrayal of the feature.

Also, rare example of sci-fi comedy. There's German made show, based on the Ijon Tichy series [1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9D_PlfpBH4

cl422• 6 years ago

This paragraph is really beautiful:

I went gradually from level to level, each time learning the next version of the thing, and in this there was nothing remarkable. Everyone knows it — everyone first learned the version of the stork and then the more realistic explanation of his own genesis. The point is that all the earlier versions, even those as patently false as the one with the stork, are not discarded completely. Something of them remains in us; they mesh with succeeding versions and somehow continue to exist — but that is not all. As far as the facts are concerned — say, in the case of my father’s diploma — it is not difficult to determine what the correct version is, the one that counts. It is otherwise with experience. Each experience has its weight, its authority, which does not admit of argument and depends only on itself. And herein lies the problem, for the sole guardian and guarantor of the authenticity of experience is memory.

Given it's Christmas Eve, I think our memories of Christmas and what it means is a good example of this. As children we explain gifts on Christmas as something Santa Claus provides overnight. The forward-motion of life eventually teaches us that it is, in fact, our parents giving gifts... Yet the original belief and magic stays with us, and the chronology of beliefs superceded by new beliefs and realities feeds the myth and power of Christmas.

Borges also discusses the subjective experiences we have when producing work in a number of his works[1], which is also magical in a way that Lem's paragraph is -- our lived experiences forever bias us in a ways that we might never expect.

Merry Christmas everyone.

[1] For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Menard,_Author_of_the_Q...

MichaelZuo• 6 years ago

The path dependency of the human nervous system, and all its derivative constructs, is remarkable to contemplate next to the great motions of the world.

b0rsuk5• 6 years ago

There's a term for this: "level of abstraction". Also "level of detail" when it comes to computer graphics. He hasn't said anything remarkable here. To move faster, to understand things at a grander scale, to understand some larger phenomena you need to (sometimes) skip unnecessary detail that would slow you down in pointless arguments.

SNACKeR99• 6 years ago

He hasn't said anything remarkable here.

To each his own. Comparing his ideas to software development would not be my first instinct, but I don't think level of abstraction is what he was going for. A closer analogy would be where there are many different implementations of an interface that run concurrently and then have their many outputs fused back into one single output. But that reads more awkwardly than the way Lem said it :)

ignotos• 6 years ago

He's not really talking about abstraction or level of detail.

He's talking about how the "magical", naive, imagination-based ways we understand things when we are young colour the way we perceive them we we get older.

Even if we know, rationally, that the way we used to think about something was incorrect, and conflicts with what we know to be true as adults, we don't discard those old ideas entirely, and they remain internalised to some extent:

The point is that all the earlier versions, even those as patently false as the one with the stork, are not discarded completely. Something of them remains in us; they mesh with succeeding versions and somehow continue to exist

I actually think it's at least a little more profound than you give it credit for.

will_pseudonym• 6 years ago

Every time I see an "ł", I think there's something on my monitor, or dead pixels. I definitely tried to remove the debris from my monitor with my thumb before realizing it was an "L with stroke" haha :)

b0rsuk5• 6 years ago

In Polish, "ł" is pronounced like english "w", an "w' like english "v".

NotCamelCase• 6 years ago

As if Polish wasn't hard enough! That pronunciation is very confusing when you learn the language through English, e.g. 'wino' is Polish for 'wine'.

stas2k• 6 years ago

He also has an amazing essay on futurology called Summa Technologiae. It clearly shows his insight into what is happening to our society as we advance in tech.

It was recently translated to English and is a must read.

elmolino89• 6 years ago

It took me a bit to figure out the name "Witus". In original Polish it is Wituś, diminutive of Witold.

ajuc2• 6 years ago

Witus sounds like something serious in Latin :) Wituś sounds cute. Would never make the jump :)

b0rsuk5• 6 years ago

Sounds like Lithuanian rather than Polish.

Stanisław Lem's Reflections on the Objects of His Childhood Home

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