Beware: SCP is as enthralling as TV Tropes.
> Suggested reading order is from top to bottom. For those wishing to read the book There Is No Antimemetics Division, begin with "SCP-055" and finish with "Champions of Nothing."
Checked every one of those links, which also work. I can't understand why are you... wait, what were we talking about?
If you enjoyed any one of those three, then I recommend the others.
It's like four pages and it lays out the fiction better than many 400-page novels or entire films dealing with similar subject matters have, IMO.
My timing is poor. Should have taken that "sit alone" part more seriously. I have an intense need to do just that!
I can give myself some time. Unlikely to be enough.
It makes the same mistake Steven King did when writing the Dark Tower; it over-explains the mystery and intrigue that made the initial story (The Gunslinger) so compelling, and leans too much on its characters to carry the story.
I say the same thing about the SCP antimeme, as I say to Dark Tower readers: Read the first story, skip the rest or treat them as unrelated fanfics.
It's important because SCP is important, i.e. it borrows its greatness from the success of the normal day-to-day SCP operations.
Without it, it's just a story about amnesia at a government facility, and those kind of books are a dime a dozen.
The weakest parts are when it focuses too much on the antagonist, where it tends to forget the actual definition of 3125 and just makes it something/someone that causes the world to end in random wacky crazy ways.
When it gets post-apocalyptic the writing also tends to forget how travel times and geography work. (Pretty common problem with old SF, where you'd go to a "planet" and there are like, 3 people who live on the planet. In this case the remaining living protagonist somehow manages to walk between very far places on his own without needing food and such.)
Tbh it felt like the author had written himself into a corner and made this up ad-hoc as a way to keep the story going.
I thought it fit their ethos, eg these two older ones are similar.
The 'anti-memetic antagonist' idea is interesting, but that seems to be the only idea that's in there - the constant amnesia get's old quick and it tears reality apart way too quickly to still care.
Sadly, the answer is that you can't.
Qntm's other works are criminally underrated.
Suppose there are two distinct entities, each such that if it is learned about, then it kills the learner, call them Geigh and Ritaar. What happens when Geigh learns about Ritaar?
Sometimes you still remember bits from a dream right after you've woken up - but this memory somehow vanishes rapidly and is gone a few minutes later. This despite you already being awake at that time and consciously having a memory of having had that memory. Only the memory itself is gone.
(Unless one had training and could capture the memory, e.g. in a dream journal)
Makes me wonder if this hints at some interesting neurological processes: It seems there is either some process in the brain that actively erases dream memories, or that dream memories are somehow stored differently in the brain than regular memories and only appear as the same thing to the consciousness. (Sort of like some part of the directory tree being mounted on a different file system)
Obviously I don't remember what the actual dream was, just that I suddenly realised it's a dream from the distant past.
Occasionally my brain likes screwing with me and in the dream it goes "You're remembering this dream, you're about to be woken up" and then a loud noise or something external will happen an wake me up and leave me with a great sense of unease.
Now, I don't believe my mind can actually predict the future. I can only assume my brain is doing this crap quite often and just happens to get it right every once in a while. Still a creepy feeling.
Not sure if this is actually the truth, or just some random speculation, so heap of salt and all that. Also, I have no idea how to test it.
Sometimes I my significant other sleep-talks, and sometimes it is clear enough that I’ll answer (misunderstanding it to be regular talk). It is quite rare (although not unheard of) for them to remember what lead to a sleep conversation, which leads me to believe that whatever their brain is doing at night, it doesn’t have much to do with the dreams they remember. But that’s pretty dang anecdotal!
Edit: the sleep-talks they do remember could just explained by waking up in the middle of the night to find the memory of the sleep-talk in their short term memory, and then the brain retroactively spins up a dream to fit it, of course.
There's a fairly simple model that is consistent with this: Nothing is committed to long-term memory while you are dreaming, so when you wake up from a dream, everything is in short-term memory only. Unless you make an active effort to commit it (which you're used to happening automatically), like writing it down or otherwise thinking hard about it, it will simply vanish once you use your short-term memory for something else, like moving around.
With previous anaesthesia experiences I've had, it's like a slice of time is cut out. I'm going into the procedure room and the next thing I know I'm in recovery.
This time was different. When they wheeled me out to my wife, I was completely lucid (confirmed by her). I told my wife I remembered essentially the whole procedure. I can remember telling her this. But later, throughout the rest of the day, the memories faded out a piece at a time.
Now, though I just barely remember telling my wife that I remembered the procedure, I don't remember the procedure at all. In fact, I can't even remember where I was when I was talking to my wife. I don't remember the recovery room or even leaving the hospital at all. I have a very faint memory of being in the car. Even my memories of the rest of the afternoon are vague.
It is so weird. It's like the tape slowly degraded over time. I wonder if this is what dementia feels like.
maybe it could be the extreme case of state-dependent memory?
It'd be the idea of something being perfectly memorable but when you attempt to describe it or begin in anyway to record or communicate about it your mind just goes blank, only for the memory to re-emerge some time later like a shower nightmare. Forever in your head but unable to pass onto anyone else.
Like, you can't learn to drive a car or play a violin by reading a book about it.
There are SCPs that affect communication:
You might contrast with SCP-2521 that attacks those that use written or spoken language to refer to it, so the documentation page is one giant infographic without text.[1]
qntm is a fantastic writer & programmer I had the pleasure of working with on a project in the past. If you're looking for stuff to read that gets your neurons firing, there's a lot to find on their website.
...a story about Epstein's prison cell? (/s again sorry)
I'm going to wake up now, thanks in advance folks!
tuatoru•6mo ago
So, not much different to most activist causes, then.
tuatoru•6mo ago