Upcoming Short Stories, and My Favorite Books/Games from 2022
Best-of-year lists published before the year ends are a race to the bottom
Upcoming Short Stories
I have four short stories I could write a sequel to, each of which has its own advantages.
The one with the most views (and likes off-Substack). I have a sequel outlined for Detective Manse and the Horror from Beyond Time, with even more outrageous metaphors planned.
The one that’s the most topical. I've decided that The Turing Olympics and This Space Intentionally Left Blank exist in the same continuity where AI is beginning to influence the world, and have a story in mind bringing those two tracks together
The one I have the most lore and ideas for. The Library of Eristat (and indirectly, The Confession of King Enoch, the Benevolent Tyrant) has a novel length follow-up already written which I could serialize here, rather than holding onto it until an agent or publisher bites
The one I’ve been putting off the longest. The Infinite Drop has a story arc I have had planned out in my head for a while, but I haven’t been motivated to write it yet, which may be a sign.
For my other short stories, the three Forbidden Fruit stories are effectively wrapped up unless anyone can think of a fruit-related historic figure I’m missing, and Quantum Roulette and Altered States feel complete on their own.
On the tabletop gaming analysis front, my next project would be either to dig more into Avalon with access to a dataset from ProAvalon, or take a crack at Pandemic/Forbidden Island/Tycoon.
If you have any opinions on what deserves a follow-up and want to help steer my personal course of history, or if you just want to make my year and talk about whatever story or post brought you to this Substack, I'd appreciate hearing from you!
My Favorite Books Read in 2022
My favorite books I read in 2022! Starting with just the titles, then a brief description and an quote from each book to share the flavor.
Game Theory/Decision-Making:
Hidden Games: The Surprising Power of Game Theory to Explain Irrational Human Behavior, by Erez Yoeli and Moshe Hoffman
Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment, by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass R. Sunstein
Morality and AI:
The Alignment Problem: Machine Learning and Human Values, by Brian Christian
What We Owe the Future by William MacAskill
Social Science/Public Policy:
Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It by Richard V Reeves
Same list, with some brief descriptions and an interesting quote from each:
Hidden Games: The Surprising Power of Game Theory to Explain Irrational Human Behavior, by Erez Yoeli and Moshe Hoffman
An interesting look at how the logic of game theory affects group dynamics such as excommunication for violations of arbitrary social norms; I found it interesting and relevant throughout.
“When it comes to evolution, the logic is likely already familiar. People’s tastes evolved to motivate us to act in ways that benefit us. We evolved a taste for fatty, salty, and sweet foods because that motivated us to seek out foods high in fat, salt, and calories in an environment where these were rare. We evolved an attraction to symmetrical faces, chiseled jaws, and broad hips because this motivated us to seek partners who were more healthy, successful, and fertile.”
Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment, by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass R. Sunstein
A deep dive by a Nobel prize-winning economist into inconsistency or noise in decision making, a concept which is different than bias. The book goes into examples of fields like criminal sentencing where substantial variance can be observed, and generally leans in the direction of trying to turn decision-making processes into algorithms to reduce noise, and break complex decisions and evaluations into smaller parts.
“Michael Macy of Cornell University and his collaborators asked whether the visible views of other people could suddenly make identifiable political positions popular among Democrats and unpopular among Republicans—or vice versa. The short answer is yes. If Democrats in an online group saw that a particular point of view was obtaining initial popularity among Democrats, they would endorse that point of view, ultimately leading most Democrats, in the relevant group, to favor it. But if Democrats in a different online group saw that the very same point of view was obtaining initial popularity among Republicans, they would reject that point of view, ultimately leading most Democrats, in the relevant group, to reject it. Republicans behaved similarly. In short, political positions can be just like songs, in the sense that their ultimate fate can depend on initial popularity. As the researchers put it, “chance variation in a small number of early movers” can have major effects in tipping large populations—and in getting both Republicans and Democrats to embrace a cluster of views that actually have nothing to do with each other.”
The Alignment Problem: Machine Learning and Human Values, by Brian Christian
This field is changing so rapidly another book might already be due on technologies like ChatGPT, but this goes deep into techniques used to train AI agents in both board games and video games and reveals fascinating analogies to how the human mind appears to work.
“we begin to get a neuroscientific and computational account of the well-known phenomena of what’s called the “hedonic treadmill.” Namely, people have a stubborn and persistent return to their emotional baseline, regardless of changes in their long-term quality of life. Lottery winners and paraplegics, famously, are emotionally back to more or less where they started not long after their respective dramatic life changes. Dopamine and reinforcement learning offer clues as to why. If happiness comes not from things having gone well, not from things being about to go well, but from things going better than expected, then yes, for better or worse, as long as our expectations keep tuning themselves to reality, then a long-term state of being pleasantly surprised should be simply unsustainable.”
What We Owe the Future by William MacAskill
A philosopher affiliated with the Effective Altruism movement makes the case for long-termism and heavily weighing the impact our actions will make on the long-term future in our considerations. The book also argues that the decisions being made today about the development of our world and societies may have enormous impact on our collective future, and whether or not we reach it at all.
“We might soon be approaching a critical juncture in the human story. Technological development is creating new threats and opportunities for humanity, putting the lives of future generations on the line. I now believe the world’s long-run fate depends in part on the choices we make in our lifetimes. The future could be wonderful: we could create a flourishing and long-lasting society, where everyone’s lives are better than the very best lives today. Or the future could be terrible, falling to authoritarians who use surveillance and AI to lock in their ideology for all time, or even to AI systems that seek to gain power rather than promote a thriving society. Or there could be no future at all: we could kill ourselves off with biological weapons or wage an all-out nuclear war that causes civilisation to collapse and never recover.”
Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It by Richard V Reeves
To go ahead and spoil the first question posed in the title of the book, the author thinks the reason “why males are struggling” is that: 1) Male brains develop more slowly than female brains causing boys to do worse in school (and that boys should start kindergarten a year later than current policy as the default) 2) Men are under-represented in jobs where they’ve been proven to make a difference for young boys like teaching and in fields where employment is growing rather than shrinking like nursing. 3) Men need to play an important role as fathers, which has a particularly large benefit for their sons.
The book tries to avoid getting dragged down into culture war battles, stating that the problems it discusses aren’t a conspiracy against men, a personal failing on their part, or some zero-sum trade-off against women, but need to be understood as structural issues that we want to improve for the same reasons we should care about structural issues that impact women.
”Some argue that it is premature to worry about the gender gap in education, when the pay gap still runs the other way. I will have more to say about the pay gap in chapter 2; for now, suffice it to say that the labor market is still structured in favor of workers without major childcare and those workers are mostly men. But at the same time, the education system is structured in favor of girls and women, for the reasons I will set out in this chapter. So we have an education system favoring girls and a labor market favoring men. Two wrongs don’t make a right. We need to fix both. Inequalities matter, regardless of their direction. It is also worth noting that while women are catching up with men in the labor market, boys and men are falling further behind in the classroom. One gap is narrowing, the other is widening.”
My Favorite Games Played in 2022
Weird story-driven games:
The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe. A substantial update to the original existential crisis simulator, featuring insane meta-spiraling ramblings delivered in a British accent, with more content and endings. My biggest endorsement is that it made me laugh out loud multiple times with its new material, my biggest issue is still that the game isn’t really designed to make sense or deliver a coherent story across its endings, all of the branches of the game are weird and interesting in different ways, but not really in a way that adds up to more than the sum of its parts. It’s a bunch of clever riffing you can probably tell quickly if it’s for you or not.
The Forgotten City. The Stanley Parable started out as a Half-Life mod, this game started out as a Skyrim mod; I think this trend is great. It’s a short little time-looping adventure where you travel back to ancient Rome and get to debate their morality contrasted against present day norms, and explore a few clever mysteries as you try to figure out why their city keeps falling under a curse. As a game, it is less than polished, but as a story and experience, it was a lot of fun.
AI, The Somnium Files: Nirvana Initiative. A mind-bending mystery from the creators of the Zero Escape series. It has some juvenile humor seemingly intended for teenage boys, and incredibly intricate plotting intended for people who think all existing sci-fi isn’t complex enough. The mystery is great, the gameplay is much improved from the last AI Somnium title (no context required), and it plays with some of the themes of Zero Escape more effectively than that series itself did.
Puzzle:
Escape Academy. The escape room experience in a video game, pen and paper required, with timed puzzles. The best thing I can say about it is that it feels like solving a real escape room, where you have to completely focus on the problem you’re trying to solve, and time is a resource you have to use wisely.
Mainstream:
Elden Ring. A portal to a sprawling fantasy world that is fundamentally hostile to your existence as the player and trying to kill you every step of the way. It’s much more forgiving than past Souls games as there are enormous chunks of optional content you can play, and you can level up your character and need less polish in your gameplay as a result. The story as written by George R R Martin makes very little sense to me, but the vibes are incredible, the sights and encounters memorable, and I had a story I’ll remember in that game even if Martin didn’t write it.
Guardians of the Galaxy. A fun alternate take on the Marvel characters with constant banter and creative puzzle solving, in an alternate timeline to the main movies.
Cuphead. A shoot-em-up platformer with 10x better art than comparable games, 10x less content, and 10x more difficulty. Truly one of the most difficult games I’ve ever played, only finished because a little one thought it was a cartoon he could watch by asking me to play it, sometimes fussing at me for not playing well enough. The 1930’s rubber hose animation style makes for excellent visuals, and the encounters are all difficult but fair with patterns that can be learned. Fair warning is that based on achievement data most people don’t progress far in the game, and you’re signing up for an experience where you will lose over and over again before you’ve learned enough and practiced enough against a particular challenge to have a shot at winning.
That’s all I’ve got, and I’ll take your thoughts on any of it, but particularly interested in feedback around the short story options.
I've read at least some of all the short stories you mentioned, as well as the games analysis. While I enjoyed all of them to various extents, I'd prefer new stories more than additions to existing ones. Except the novel for the library of eristat which I think I'd like a lot. I'd also like more board game analysis. Thanks so much for continuing to publish. It's always a nice surprise when I get a new post emailed to me. You do a great job.