I am a great fan of Ted Chiang. Many see Understand as his weakest story. I love it, as it is the finest work of intelligence porn ever written. And one of the funniest things I have ever seen on the internet involved it.
When I was young I used to read a nootropics message board, a mostly male folly of a forum whose members would have Chinese labs synthesize drugs with some claimed positive effect on IQ. As a rule, they didn't do much of anything. But every time someone tried a new one, there was an excitement. One prankster claimed to have gotten a hold of some synaptogenic drug that was currently in clinical trials and then began posting excerpts from Understand, such as the following:
With this language, I can see how my mind is operating. I don't pretend to see my own neurons firing; such claims belong to John Lilly and his LSD experiments of the sixties. What I can do is perceive the gestalts; I see the mental structures forming, interacting. I see myself thinking, and I see the equations that describe my thinking, and I see myself comprehending the equations, and I see [...]
---
First published:
March 10th, 2026
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/opsyBnWQj6prMuRaA/not-loving-liking-what-you-see-1
---
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
