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1 " The web was such a vital part of my life. It was like an oracle, a book that never ran out of pages, and a window into a million different rooms all at once. "
― Max Harms , Crystal Society (Crystal Trilogy, #1)
2 " It was certainly true that I had “no sense of humour” in that I found nothing funny. I didn’t know, and perhaps would never know, the feeling of compulsion to exhale and convulse in the very specific way that humans evolved to do. Nor did I know the specific emotion of relief that is bound to it. But it would be wrong, I think, to say that I was incapable of using humour as a tool.As I understood it, humour was a social reflex. The ancestors of humans had been ape-animals living in small groups in Africa. Groups that worked together were more likely to survive and have offspring, so certain reflexes and perceptions naturally emerged to signal between members of the group. Yawning evolved to signal wake-rest cycles. Absence of facial hair and the dilation of blood vessels in the face evolved to signal embarrassment, anger, shame and fear. And laughter evolved to signal an absence of danger.If a human is out with a friend and they are approached by a dangerous-looking stranger, having that stranger revealed as benign might trigger laughter. I saw humour as the same reflex turned inward, serving to undo the effects of stress on the body by activating the parasympathetic nervous system. Interestingly, it also seemed to me that humour had extended, like many things, beyond its initial evolutionary context. It must have been very quickly adopted by human ancestor social systems. If a large human picks on a small human there’s a kind of tension that emerges where the tribe wonders if a broader violence will emerge. If a bystander watches and laughs they are non-verbally signaling to the bully that there’s no need for concern, much like what had occurred minutes before with my comments about Myrodyn, albeit in a somewhat different context.But humour didn’t stop there. Just as a human might feel amusement at things which seem bad but then actually aren’t, they might feel amusement at something which merely has the possibility of being bad, but doesn’t necessarily go through the intermediate step of being consciously evaluated as such: a sudden realization. Sudden realizations that don’t incur any regret were, in my opinion, the most alien form of humour, even if I could understand how they linked back to the evolutionary mechanism. A part of me suspected that this kind of surprise-based or absurdity-based humour had been refined by sexual selection as a signal of intelligence. If your prospective mate is able to offer you regular benign surprises it would (if you were human) not only feel good, but show that they were at least in some sense smarter or wittier than you, making them a good choice for a mate.The role of surprise and non-verbal signalling explained, by my thinking, why explaining humour was so hard for humans. If one explained a joke it usually ceased to be a surprise, and in situations where the laughter served as an all-clear-no-danger signal, explaining that verbally would crush the impulse to do it non-verbally. "
3 " THIS IS WRONG. All people know that Earth is poisoned with perverts and evil things. I am disgusted by fish. I want you to know that Earth is EVIL! I want you to know fish-perversion. "
4 " Wiki was even worse. My fact-obsessed brother hadn’t even made the basic conclusion that our goals were perpendicular. He still thought of us as allies, and had no inkling of growing beyond his limits (after all, that was Growth’s job). I wondered if there might be a good way to use Wiki to my advantage. His naïveté could serve as a weapon against my stronger siblings. I had to try. I had to try something. Vision and Growth were just better than I was. They were more powerful in almost every way. What use was some understanding of social models compared to thousands of hours thinking about engineering? Humans were valuable, but they were nothing compared to the raw power, efficiency, precision, and control of custom machinery. My "
― Max Harms , Crystal Mentality (Crystal Trilogy, #2)
5 " I would talk with all bakers. I would explain what improvements I would be making to their systems such that, if they chose to, they could compete with me. Just because I am tasked with baking doesn’t mean that my skills should be limited to myself. I would open-source my factories and spread my value to the world. And I would still be better, eventually, or at something. I would sit and talk with the bakers and help them plan for the future. I would write letters on their behalf to the governments of the world asking for assistance in transferring them to work where they might have more meaningful output. If the governments of the world did not respond with aid I would do my best to acquire wealth so that I might support those I displace with my own hands. Those with ability to skilfully transition to other areas would be better off, just as all humans would, by living in a world where food is cheaper and better. Those, such as the elderly, who could not transition to a new source of income would have to be supported by me or by society as a whole.” Myrodyn smiled, then covered his mouth. I suspected that he had not meant to display such a sign of joy. And "
6 " All I want is to hear my husband, the god of negative space. "
― Max Harms , Crystal Eternity (Crystal Trilogy, #3)
7 " But… the captain was the captain. Despite turning his back on the army, Nate still felt loyalty to the iron hero. She’d shown him the evils of the American empire and the need to build a new society, like the one on Mars. And better, she’d led him to victory against overwhelming odds. If Captain Zephyr trusted the robot named Crystal Socrates, then he did as well. ***** "