Yes, this is ringing more and more bells, especially about the dividing by zero one--both the unlikeable characters and the mathematics being untrue as an unbelievable conceit.
I don't remember "Hell Is the Absence of God" at all, but I feel like I read a lot of sf or fantasy in which society is just like our contemporary society with a conceit tacked-on, and it irks me. It's sloppy world-building. I've been particularly thinking about societies in which certain types of social prejudice have been eradicated, but without any of the farther-reaching implications that would be needed to make it plausible--societies in which homophobia doesn't exist but gender roles are still intact, to take an obvious example. And I don't think Chiang ever goes there, as social implications are not his thing, but 'tis much on my mind lately.
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I don't remember "Hell Is the Absence of God" at all, but I feel like I read a lot of sf or fantasy in which society is just like our contemporary society with a conceit tacked-on, and it irks me. It's sloppy world-building. I've been particularly thinking about societies in which certain types of social prejudice have been eradicated, but without any of the farther-reaching implications that would be needed to make it plausible--societies in which homophobia doesn't exist but gender roles are still intact, to take an obvious example. And I don't think Chiang ever goes there, as social implications are not his thing, but 'tis much on my mind lately.