Sad day.
Damn this darkest of timelines.
He will be missed.
I was not ready for this news.
This year has been a continuous ass beating
I had no idea he was so old, mostly because he never seemed like it.
More like he always seemed like it. In Next Generation he was only in his 40s and 50s but seemed so much older.
His role as Picard defined what a good leader and authority figure should be like for me.
I gave my team the explicit instruction to call me out if I ever did anything that they’d estimate would make Picard disappointed in my leadership.
Someone brought up some harry Potter fanfic which apparently and bizarrely motivating the philosophy of peter thiel and his ilk.
I read the synopsis, and (regardless of your feeling on generations) is essentially extolling the philosophy of the bad guy in that movie.
Picard, reflecting: “Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives, but I’d rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because they’ll never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we’ve lived. After all Number One, we’re only mortal.”
Speak for yourself, sir. I plan to live forever.
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality?
If Thiel’s group is saying they’re in someway inspired by it, they hilariously misinterpreted the point of the story.
I don’t know what synopsis you read, but the story in no way is extolling the philosophy of Dr. Soran, given that any death is generally treated as a worst-case outcome, whereas Dr.Soran was willing to sacrifice 100s of millions of people to get what he personally wants.
Thiel named his security agency Palantir and calls everyone who criticizes him the antichrist, his group misses the point constantly.
The philosophy of HPMoR is genuinely contemptible though, even if it’s not quite as bad as the Dark Enlightenment dorks
I did like certain elements, and I am still amused to this day that the guy managed to crowdsource his ending to a group of “critical thinkers” without any of them catching on.
The beginning of the story was definitely stronger than the rest of it, partially just due to the world of Harry Potter being not-well-thought-out. It’s fun to poke holes in the poor world-building. As for the ending, I think a lot of web serials are written that way (taking ideas from the comments), and I’m pretty sure he was open about doing it. Right? Am I misremembering that?
What about the philosophy of HPMoR is contemptible? I’m genuinely curious as to what you find repugnant.
Most fanfiction/webnovel authors don’t run the comment section like they’re enlightening the savages with their grasp and explanation of basic game theory. Yudkowsky, however, seemed to think he was passing down wisdom as the golden god of rational thought.
As for the contempt I hold for his personal philosophy, I’m not interested in pulling out quotes from HPMoR in 2026 but I’ll say that his current thoughts on how a true AI will inevitably kill all humans for not contributing to its goals says a lot more about his personal worldview than any interesting speculation on how an artificial consciousness will see the world.
I’ll give him some credit for rejecting full bore naive utilitarianism though, even if all his other thoughts on the matter bely his true opinions on the matter.
Roko’s basilisk? That’s not in the story, but one of the ‘great’ outputs from the forum that the author created.
Oh yeah, Yudkowsky is a super weird dude. I haven’t looked into what he’s been doing over the past few years, but I assume he’s gotten… more eccentric.
I couldn’t get through HPMoR. Did that story really inspire Peter Thiel? I didn’t sense anything fascist-coded in it, but again, it was a cringe-worthy read and I stopped right around the end of the first chapter because Harry’s barely-veiled smarmy attitude was too noxious for me to tolerate.
I don’t know that inspire is the right word, influenced him and the other proto-fascists he hangs out with, sure.
That’s not a missed point, that’s contempt.
I bought palantir stock in 2020 and sold when I found out the literal first piece of information about Peter Thiel
I was introduced to Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by the Behind the Bastards episodes on the Zizians. Or, I should say, reintroduced. I had previously been on a bit of a fanfic binge and stumbled across it. I got a little way through and stopped because (1) it was deeply boring and (2) it was deeply strange.
Just the Wikipedia one. I absolutely admit that not having read the source material (and that the synopsis is crowd sourced and easily could be written through the lens of someone seeing what they want to see) I can’t make a real assement.
But yes, death is the ultimate enemy… But, given the synopsis that appears to “rationally” entail that as such, any means justify the ends, and that if you accept the fantasy of a mechanic for resurrection then that gives broad latitude for moral justification for pretty much anything. Even one step further, a moral obligation to do pretty much anything.
I’d argue that Dr. Soran couldn’t delineate the fantasy afforded by the nexus from reality: whomever he killed could be conjured back by him in the nexus. The problematic actions could be “morally deferred”.
Regardless of any interpretation of the material, I (like Picard) reject the premise that death is the ultimate enemy. And, like Picard, I am very uneasy with any philosophy that claims to have simple derivable moral evaluations, especially if when you pull back the curtain the underlying mechanics boil down to “the ends justify the means”.
If these dont apply to the source, then it was a bad synopsis. Or It was a good synopsis and I’m bad at reading.
I just read the Wikipedia synopsis. It’s… accurate to the events but leaves out who is on-board with which decisions or what the characters know at the time of major events. Harry is horrified by Voldemort murdering Quirrel to give Hermione a Horcrux, for example. Harry is still the protagonist of the story and Voldemort is still the antagonist.
Dr. Soran is an absolute madman given he doesn’t know or understand how the Nexus works. Even if we assume that the Nexus can actually bring everyone back perfectly, he’s still a madman because his plan could fail. There’s no world in which you could have enough certainty of the outcome to enact his plan.
On death: while I don’t know if I would want to live forever, I’d like to have control over when I die.
Weirdly enough, the philosophy behind HPMoR doesn’t claim to have any moral evaluations at all, since that’s not in its domain. It’s more of a framework for thinking about plans of action to take towards a desired outcome.
That’s a fascinating observation about the synopsis, seems to lend credence to my musing that Wikipedia editors may drop or include key points which betray their own reading. Probably not a malicious act, but evidence that varied weighting of events can result in divergent interpretations.
That being said, a framwork for evaluating actions in the absence of moral evaluation is, in my opinion, fundamentally flawed. The explicit absence speaks just as loudly as any prescription. And I do think Picard would have my back on that one.
Which, I stress isn’t a condemnation of the source itself: it’s a warning that such a source can be hijacked for nefarious purposes; intentionally or otherwise.
Correct.
However, I want to point out that the framework just explores and evaluates actions based on how optimal they are for getting to the goal. It’s up to your moral framework to determine which paths are unacceptable.
I find that full exploration of possible solutions is very helpful when dealing with other people, because they might be willing to pick a solution that you wouldn’t. It can help to predict sociopathic actions so they can be preemptively countered.
There is a lot to unpack there, but it sheds a lot of light onto the popularity (and depending who you ask, the subversion) of the work.
I’ll start by saying that people joke about how school doesn’t prepare them for the real world, where was “doing my taxes” class, amirite?
Fundamentally I think that an even more critical and teachable skill missing is how to be empathetic. Not like “I have the capacity to feel bad for people”, but a more general form of “I can abandon my own preconceptions to allow myself to accurately view the world through their eyes”.
That relative illiteracy leads to exactly the longing you express: how to understand what are theople are going to do, and why.
This couples with another favorite observation: when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem is going to look like a nail.
What you’ve described, roughly, is the concept of a breadth-first search. It’s a general workable algorithm to establish the type of thing you want to do.
It’s inefficient, and especially in the context of a human brain with finite working memory, still prone to suboptimal results. Still better than nothing, but suboptimal given the constraints.
So it’s a solution. And, if you didn’t have one before, the temptation is to treat that like the hammer.
Because it “works” without a moral evaluation, one might conclude that the moral evaluation isn’t important.
And then it’s a classic case of the inevitabilities of staring too long into the abyss
For me it was Optimus Prime first.
He was my childhood hero.
What no? There is so many shitheads around his age (and some also MUUUUCH unhealthy looking) that could die and instead he dies?
There so many shithead out there that most of their deaths go unremarked.
Bro he was 86. It’s not like he was too young to go.
Shatner’s still alive, so it feels weird that Picard is gone.
And Shatner even had early-onset Alzheimer 20 years ago, though he called it mad cow disease to make it seem cooler
He did act right up through his final year of life, which is kinda wild.
Exactly this is natural but somehow does not seem to happen so often to disgusting people of similar ages
Specifically 1
yeah that person to start with
You just know.
Man, that sucks. An absolute legend. There are few people, fictional or real, who had a more profound influence on my outlook on life, humanity, and what’s good in this world than he did in his role as Captain Picard.
RIP, mon capitaine. You will be missed.
Time to start rewatching some thing to remind us what humanity could be and what it should be.
I do wish I was able to watch some of his legendary work on the stage and not just tv and movies.
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I somehow thought he’d just live forever, I guess.
Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.
He will. In all of our memories.
Same. I genuinely cried when I found out. I’m not usually the type to look up to celebrities, but I always admired Patrick Stewart as an actor and a person. Knowing he’s gone makes the world feel a touch emptier.
Fare thee well, professor Xavier. You hoped like I never could
RIP
Thanks, that actually helped with this.
His comedic chops were vast and underused.
It’s not used to feel good. Not for base pleasure, certainly. It’s a medicine to improve our lives, like penicillin or opium…
I can play the bass solo to My Generation.
I’m an atheist. Sometimes I come across the question of where I get my morality. I often refer to TNG in my mind. What would Picard do? He would ask his crew for information, assess the situation, and give orders.
So much of my right and wrong came from his portrayal of that character. Today is a black day.
Im not a celebrity worshipper. I don’t read tabloids but as a latchkey Xenial. He was my TV dad. Every Sunday night I would go to bed and watch MASH and then Star Trek. From age of 9 to 15. It sparked my interest in scifi
I got a lot of of my morals through that show and ironically Roseanne, despite the wildebeast she turned into later in life.
His loss hurt. They usually don’t, even for people who’s shows, movies and music I like. But this one stung far more than I thought it would.
Avengers doomsday is going to be even more heartbreaking knowing it’s his last performance and watching his world get destroyed.
I only watched this about 50 times last night. https://youtu.be/kH1XlwHQv9o?is=Q2jaVTpEvsYnraTc
The nuanced stoicism he brought to the leadership and mentor roles like Jean Luc Picard and the maniacal aloofness he brought to roles like Director Avery Bullock… I am happy to have experienced his characters.
Make it so.
Every obit will mention his roles as Picard and Professor X. Let’s celebrate his other awesome roles, like Uriel Septim VII in Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, or just being himself as he read Shakespearean sonnets each night to the world during COVID lockdown. Or my personal favorite, his scene in Extras that still makes me laugh.
He was a terrific Gurney Halleck in Lynch’s Dune.
And honestly, from everything I’ve heard about the man, he was just an all-around lovely person. Caring and supportive of anyone who had the good fortune to know him.
A fun fact I enjoy about his role as Uriel Septim is that apparently he was given a large booklet (90 pages apparently) of notes on his character’s background, motivations, the world’s wider lore, as well as notes that linked into roles Stewart had played before. The Oblivion team were worried that they’d overload him with too much information, but Stewart was, in fact, delighted by all the details, and remarked that he wished all of his roles would give him so much to work with.
When I was in college I had a Shakespeare course that required me to get through about one play per week and I was falling behind on the reading. However I learned that the campus AV room had tapes of Royal Shakespeare Company productions which you could check out. There’s not always a Hollywood movie of every Shakespeare play and not all the movies stick to the text. But the RSC ones did 100% and they were well made. They weren’t captures from live performances with an audience, more like soap-opera level of production values.
But guess who was in all of them.
Patrick Stewart got me through college.
King Leodegrance in Excalibur
He was actually a Shakespearean actor, but most of the World knows him for his roles on Films and TV Series.
A friend of mine saw him as Oberron in Midsummer Night’s Dream
This was Patrick Stewart’s best role. Sterling from the 1995 film Jeffrey.
Sejanus in I, Claudius.
My favorite role of his was Ahab in the 1998 Moby Dick.
Whoa, now moby dick references in star trek first contact feels like an easter egg
If you sail the seas, track down Blunt Talk, he’s amazing in it.
Blunt Talk is deeply underrated.
Such an underrated show. I loved it!
They spent the entire voice acting budget on the guy that died immediately in Oblivion. Money well spent.
As Ebinezer Scrooge in “A Christmas Carol”
Everyone seems to be forgetting he was Director Avery Bullock
“Some Of Use Spent The Late 80s & Early 90s Getting Laid, Smith.”
DJ Buttercup and you put respect on that name.
And that time he told us all that he’s uncircumcised and didn’t know.
As king Ricard in Robin Hood: men in thighs. ‘It’s good to be the king’
Thank you for that! Never seen that before.
Also check the outtakes of him trying to get through the scene with Gervais not keeping it together https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JlLbZVxRH60
Or as Pigtrick the severed pig’s head in Bait.
Wil Wheaton lost a man who was more of a father to him than his real dad.
in between sobs, as I choke back tears: “Shut up, Wesley.”
Captain Picard was a fictional role model for me as a kid, since I had a shit upbringing. It hurts me to see him gone, so I can only imagine how hard it is for Will.
That’s one of the best things about TNG. The characters were decent, moral, caring, people who provided good role model for viewers. It’s great to know that the actors were also good, caring people who formed a tight knit family and took great care of the awkward teenage Wil.
This line in particular from Wil’s blog post hit me:
He always texted me back when I reached out to him directly, no matter what it was about, and he always — always — made me feel special.
Yeah that line melted my heart into a puddle. Poor man is probably going through it right now.
They’ll always be boldly going through their art.
Hwil Hweaton is an ok guy.
Rest in peace, Captain.
He seems like a good guy to me, someone who isn’t afraid to take a stand and use his (small) platform to stand up for what he believes in, and he’ll admit to mistakes when he makes them. I also think he’s a great writer.
And, I don’t think he’s be such a good guy if it weren’t for his TNG castmates.
