@ESYudkowsky: Remember when you were a kid and thought you might have psychic powers, so you dealt yourself face-down playing cards and tried to guess whether they were red or black, and recorded your accuracy rate over several batches of tries?
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And then remember how you had absolutely no idea to do stats at that age, so you stayed confused for a while longer?
Apologies for the usage of the japanese; but it is a very apt description: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chūnibyō,
I tried reading one Egan book (Incandescence) and had to give up because it was 90% infodump. Glad to see he's mocking rats though.
god damn, maybe my internalized ideal of a sci fi author is Asimov but not a shithead? depressing. I need better sci-fi
no, the fault is mine. He's written tons, I tried this and bounced off it. I might take a look at Diaspora
Take a look at Ken MacLeod's Fall Revolution series, if you haven't already. They're a bit old now but are a nice counterweight to a lot of US SF.