{"id":1955,"date":"2022-08-26T21:56:51","date_gmt":"2022-08-27T04:56:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jjkpryde.com\/blog\/?p=1955"},"modified":"2022-08-26T22:32:20","modified_gmt":"2022-08-27T05:32:20","slug":"my-take-on-the-moon-is-a-harsh-mistress-by-robert-a-heinlein","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jjkpryde.com\/blog\/my-take-on-the-moon-is-a-harsh-mistress-by-robert-a-heinlein\/","title":{"rendered":"My take on &#8220;The Moon is a Harsh Mistress&#8221; by Robert A. Heinlein"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><br \/><br \/>My rating on GoodReads: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/review\/show\/4943202509\">3 of 5 stars<\/a><br \/><br \/><br \/>So many very insightful reviews on this book I hesitate to try to chime in.<br \/><br \/>I chose to read this book in reaction to the news articles (<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/technology\/2022\/07\/22\/google-ai-lamda-blake-lemoine-fired\/\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/techno\u2026<\/a>)<br \/>regarding Blake Lemoine&#8217;s belief that Google&#8217;s LaMDA chat bot had become sentient.<br \/>Apparently, this book is one of the seminal SF works on computer sentience.<br \/>It did give me a basis for comparing more recent plots (e.g. &#8220;Her&#8221;, &#8220;iRobot&#8221;, etc.)<br \/><br \/>Unfortunately, Heinlein uses his sentient computer, named &#8220;Mike&#8221;, as more of a deux ex machina device to pull off an otherwise highly unlikely and predictable plot. The most redeeming twist is that Mike <em>apparently<\/em> dies at the end which opens a potential sequel plot using current science to make Mike come back as a more useful analysis of AI singularity.<br \/><br \/>Besides that, Heinlein used his other characters to celebrate an anarchist society where it is deemed reasonable to &#8220;eliminate&#8221; those you don&#8217;t approve of by throwing them out an airlock. Heinlein is a very influential writer. I hope this sort of thinking isn&#8217;t taken at face value by his readers.<br \/>Overall, I&#8217;m not sure I got what I came for and thus 3 stars.<br \/>-jgp<br \/><br \/><br \/><br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/review\/list\/37230781-jason-pryde\">View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My rating on GoodReads: 3 of 5 stars So many very insightful reviews on this book I hesitate to try to chime in. I chose to read this book in reaction to the news articles (https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/techno\u2026)regarding&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1960,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8],"tags":[35,36,30],"class_list":["post-1955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-about-me","tag-ai","tag-sci-fi","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.jjkpryde.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/349.jpg?fit=1600%2C2466&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p32pSF-vx","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjkpryde.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjkpryde.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjkpryde.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjkpryde.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjkpryde.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1955"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjkpryde.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1955\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1959,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjkpryde.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1955\/revisions\/1959"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjkpryde.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjkpryde.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjkpryde.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjkpryde.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}