Humman was actually my favourite part of the story. The depth of his denial and his weird, obnoxious personality were hilarious and intriguing to me. The story started going downhill for me when it dropped all pretense at analogy and started addressing the real issue explicitly. Partly because it felt clumsy. Partly because it felt like the story had suddenly gotten bored of its own framing device halfway through and unceremoniously dropped it. But mainly because from that point forward, Humman’s denial about his chess skills and his weird personality became quite irrelevant, such that all the time spent establishing them had in fact been a complete waste; the dialogue that ensued could have occurred between characters who only had a few lines or maybe a couple paragraphs of setup. (Or no setup at all; Eliezer has done dialogues where the characters’ preconceptions are established almost entirely through the dialogue.)
I wish the story had just been what it initially seemed to be on the surface: A character study where ultimately Humman’s defense mechanisms would either break down or bring him to ruin. I don’t know how it would go; I sort of imagine that over time Humman has enough interactions with people like Assi — not all of whom are as kind or as resigned — and possibly also with Tessa, that the house of cards starts to wobble and eventually falls down. I was genuinely invested in where it was all going — and then it turned out that for all intents and purposes it wasn’t going anywhere. It stopped in its tracks, to make way for a dialogue that didn’t need that setup and also didn’t pay off that setup.
Humman was actually my favourite part of the story. The depth of his denial and his weird, obnoxious personality were hilarious and intriguing to me. The story started going downhill for me when it dropped all pretense at analogy and started addressing the real issue explicitly. Partly because it felt clumsy. Partly because it felt like the story had suddenly gotten bored of its own framing device halfway through and unceremoniously dropped it. But mainly because from that point forward, Humman’s denial about his chess skills and his weird personality became quite irrelevant, such that all the time spent establishing them had in fact been a complete waste; the dialogue that ensued could have occurred between characters who only had a few lines or maybe a couple paragraphs of setup. (Or no setup at all; Eliezer has done dialogues where the characters’ preconceptions are established almost entirely through the dialogue.)
I wish the story had just been what it initially seemed to be on the surface: A character study where ultimately Humman’s defense mechanisms would either break down or bring him to ruin. I don’t know how it would go; I sort of imagine that over time Humman has enough interactions with people like Assi — not all of whom are as kind or as resigned — and possibly also with Tessa, that the house of cards starts to wobble and eventually falls down. I was genuinely invested in where it was all going — and then it turned out that for all intents and purposes it wasn’t going anywhere. It stopped in its tracks, to make way for a dialogue that didn’t need that setup and also didn’t pay off that setup.