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DICE
Mon Jul 15 2002
The cover of my copy of "the Dice Man"
makes it look like soft core porn, RANDOM_ENCOUNTER
but what it is exactly, is a little
stranger than that.
It's written as though it's an
autobiography, though the
spine calls it fiction.
The plot concerns a professional man
bored with life who breaks out of the
rut, reminiscent of Thorne Smith's THORNE
"Topper". So, comedy? The book is
certainly funny enough.
And while there are certainly enough sex
scenes to justify the pink satin sheets
on the cover, there's also quite a lot
of digs at modern psychiatry... so the
book is more satire than comedy?
But the actual focus of the novel is
the *way* the main character breaks
out of his rut: he begins literally
rolling the dice, adding a random
component to all his decision making.
He works out a philosophical rationale
for why this is a good idea, and
eventually founds a movement based on
it, creating a religion centering
around "The Book of the Die" which he
writes, and which is quoted throughout
this novel.
So:
Is the author really serious
about promoting this idea?
(Or is it all some sort of
satire of self-help movements?)
His rationale is essentially
that most human beings are a
mass of conflicting
tendencies and impulses, but
we normally filter these to
provide a semblance of a
cohesive, reliable entity to
the outside world.
The problem with doing this
is that you can become too
predictable, you let
the currently dominant
features of your personality
completely determine your
future state.
According to Luke, one is
better off giving the
minority fragments of
your self a chance to be
exercised, and possibly
grow into a new dominant
personality.
In his decision
making process,
he does not
specify how you
come up with the
options that you
use the dice to
choose between.
You're free to
assign
probability
weightings that Roll 2 dice,
reflect what you and only quit
suspect you your job on
should do. snake-eyes,
but ask the
boss for a
raise on 6,
7, or 8.
There's one scene where *two*
people decide what they're
going to do with one roll of
the dice, and they then have
to negotiate what the
probability weightings will
be between them.
So this is all not as simple as just abandoning
yourself to random influences... rather it's about
adding a random component (possibily not even that
large a random component) to your life.
===
I took this seriously
enough when I was thirteen
or so: I messed around (That was around the time
with using dice for I was interested in
decision making. probability, so
calculating dice odds
probably appealed to me).
Though after awhile I tried
adopting a set of variations
on the rules, essentially an
allowed cop-out:
Roll the dice and
watch your own
emotional reaction
to the result: if
you're alarmed by
what the dice tell
you, then that means
you need to do the
opposite.
So of course I
drifted away from
this approach...
though I've always
had a certain
fascination to
opening up new doors A forced association
with randomness. creativity exercise:
Make a list of things
relevant to a given
topic.
But I think there's
a problem with Generate random
random techniques. pairings from this
list (computers help
I think it's allure for this).
is more romantic that
practically useful. Read through the list
of pairs, looking for
The problem, at least interesting
for me, is not in connections you can
coming up with new use.
directions, but
sticking with them I've used this successfully for
far enough to get coming up with ideas that I liked
somewhere. e.g. for SF stories; to solve
engineering problems, though I don't
It doesn't believe that I've ever actually
strike me as all *used* the ideas in a finished
that hard to project.
stay open to new
directions:
pretty much all These days I sometimes
it takes is the play the Map Game:
realization that
you should. MAPGAME
Far from needing a
method of generating
new possibilities,
I need methods of
focus. Knowing when
to ignore the new
possibilities seems
like the real trick
to me.
===
Did a web search on
Luke Rhinehart,
and discovered many
things...
The given name:
George Cockroft
Rhinehart has written a number of other books,
including a recent sequel to the Dice Man, and
a published version of "The Book of the Die".
There are "dice communities" of people
who try following the Book of the Die.
A documentary exists on the subject.
Rhinehart also wrote a book about Est, which
indicates to me that he might have been *serious*
about creating something like a Dice Movement.
He seems to have excised this
Est book from his listing of
previous works, and who could
blame him.
Many an interesting detail here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A509645
A suggestion that the US version
was cut from the original.
A quote:
Adventures of Wim was published in 1986, and was
sold as 'The sequel, well almost, to The Dice
Man'. Unfortunately, it's no longer in print,
though it's reasonably easy to find in libraries
and second-hand bookshops in the UK. It is
possibly the best of Luke's books, and is well
worth the effort to find it.
It takes Luke's style to its logical conclusion,
as the entire book is made up of sections taken
from other, fictional books.
A list of "dice" songs (!):
* 'Six Different Ways' by The Cure
Hm.
* 'X, Y and Zee' by Pop Will Eat Itself
But this one is nutty, it's not
obvious how this is supposed to be
related at all.
There's the line "We are one",
and that seems to be it.
Fanatics start seeing their
fanaticism everywhere
As many people have
pointed out to me.
(What, no John Cage?)
===
Just for the hell of it, howabout
taking "the Dice Man" seriously
again for a moment?
HONEST_JOHN
How does it fit in with John Cage's
random compositions? That business
about carefully determining the
parameters that will be randomly
controlled sounds pretty Cagey.
And then there's this thesis I've been
working on of late:
UNINTENDED
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