Ted Chiang joins SFI Miller Scholars

February 2, 2023 2:58 AM

He has never interviewed a scientist for any of his stories despite the fact that, because of their fidelity to scientific ideas, they often read like they were written by one. “My understanding of science comes entirely from the written word,” Chiang says. Just as SFI’s scientists can’t predict what fresh perspective they might glean from conversations with Chiang, Chiang can’t predict whether those conversations will spur him to write new stories. 1000-word press release via MeFi's own Nelson's linkblog
posted by cgc373 (5 comments total)

Cormac McCarthy is the author most famous for hanging around SFI. But they have had an authors program for 10+ years called The Miller Scholarship, named after Bill Miller, a famous and wealthy benefactor.

They've had quite a list of residents before Chiang. Names I recognize include Daniel Dennett, Sam Shepard, and Neal Stephenson. (Also unfortunately Seth Lloyd, before he disgraced himself).

It's an odd program: bring in writers to just sort of hang out, have casual social and intellectual interaction with a bunch of the physicists, biologists, economists, etc. But then SFI is kind of an odd place and well suited for this kind of thing. Chiang makes a lot of sense as a visitor.

OMG someone reads my linkblog! Thanks for the shout-out, you made my day.
posted by Nelson at 8:09 AM on February 2, 2023 [8 favorites]

I got to spend a couple of weeks at SFI for a workshop long ago as a grad student - it was a really cool place. One of my favorite memories is attending a talk and sitting in the back next to this frumpy-looking older guy who was just hanging out and politely asking me about what I was up to, only to later find out that he was Murray Gell-Mann.
posted by chbrooks at 8:47 AM on February 2, 2023 [5 favorites]

OMG someone reads my linkblog! Thanks for the shout-out, you made my day.

Looks interesting--I've bookmarked it. And I love the glider on the tab.
posted by neuron at 8:56 AM on February 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

The Feynman lecture is in Volume II, chapter 19. You can read it here and listen to it here [#S19]. The audio is 63 minutes. I won't have time for that in the next few days but I hope to listen and read together.
posted by neuron at 7:03 PM on February 2, 2023

Ted Chiang: ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web. An excellent overview of what deep learning systems are doing and some limitations implicit. It's quite a well written piece with some deep insights, I'm impressed at his knowledge.

No direct SFI connection, except that SFI has played host to some of the leading neural networks and AI researchers going back to the 1990s. I imagine Chiang wrote this well before the SFI position was even announced.
posted by Nelson at 11:28 AM on February 10, 2023 [2 favorites]