Victorian era
Article
Victorian era is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between October 04, 2021 and September 19, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as “a reaction to the complacency of the Victorian era”; “reaction to the complacency of the Victorian era”; “writing a story set in the Victorian era”. It most often appears alongside 19th century African art, 20th century, 9-11.
Metadata
- Category: Concepts
- Mention count: 2
- Issue count: 2
- First seen: October 04, 2021
- Last seen: September 19, 2022
Appears In
Related Pages
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- 19th century African art (1 shared issues)
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- 20th century (1 shared issues)
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- 9-11 (1 shared issues)
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- abstract art (1 shared issues)
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- Aka (1 shared issues)
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- Akhenaten (1 shared issues)
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- Albert Gleizes (1 shared issues)
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- American republicanism (1 shared issues)
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- Ancien Régime (1 shared issues)
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- Ancient Egypt (1 shared issues)
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- Archaic (1 shared issues)
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- Arnold Rosner (1 shared issues)
External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
Why did the artistic elite spearhead a movement that called for such masochism? In part it was touted as a reaction to the complacency of the Victorian era and to the naive bourgeois belief in certain knowledge, inevitable progress, and the justice of the social order. Weird and disturbing art was supposed to remind people that the world was a weird and disturbing place.
Janus says this happens most often when GPT makes a mistake - for example, writing a story set in the Victorian era, then having a character take out her cell phone. Then when it tries to predict the next part - when it’s looking at the text as if a human wrote it, and trying to determine why a human would have written a story about the Victorian era where characters have cell phones - it guesses that maybe it’s some kind of odd sci-fi/fantasy dream sequence or simulation or something. So the characters start talking about the inconsistencies in their world and whether it might be a dream or a simulation. Each step of this process is predictable and non-spooky, but the end result is pretty weird.