Home > Work > Echopraxia (Firefall, #2)
21 " They know God exists already that’s old. I think now they’re trying to figure what to do with It.” “What to do with God.” “Maybe worship. Maybe disinfect. "
― , Echopraxia (Firefall, #2)
22 " Planck length and Planck time had always looked a bit too much like pixel dimensions for comfort. "
23 " from those humble beginnings we learned to see faces in the clouds and portents in the stars, to see agency in randomness, because natural selection favors the paranoid. "
24 " Let’s just agree that neither side has a monopoly on assholes. The point is, once you recognize that every human model of reality is fundamentally unreal, then it all just comes down to which one works best. "
25 " Why’s a sticky word, though. It’s not especially productive to think of them as agents with agendas. Better to think of them as—as very complex interacting systems, just doing what systems do. Whatever the reagents tell themselves to explain their role in the reaction, it’s not likely to have much to do with the actual chemistry. "
26 " you gotta let go of this whole self thing. Identity changes by the second, you turn into someone else every time a new thought rewires your brain. "
27 " Hell, rationality itself—the exalted Human ability to reason—hadn’t evolved in the pursuit of truth but simply to win arguments, to gain control: to bend others, by means logical or sophistic, to your will. "
28 " IF YOU ARE GIVEN A CHOICE, YOU BELIEVE YOU HAVE ACTED FREELY. "
29 " Brüks digested that. “Well, if it was supposed to be some kind of compliment, her delivery needs work. You’d think someone with all that brainpower would be able to cobble together a few social skills.” “Funny thing”—Moore’s voice was expressionless—“Sengupta couldn’t figure out how someone with all your interpersonal skills could be so shitty at math. "
30 " Things get even messier when linked into networks, which can literally scatter one’s mind even at today’s rudimentary levels of connectivity. The “transactive memory system” called Google is already rewiring the parts of our brains that used to remember facts locally; now those circuits store search protocols for remote access of a distributed database.74 And Google doesn’t come anywhere close to the connectivity of a real hive mind. "
31 " But people have an unfortunate habit of assuming they understand the reality just because they understood the analogy. You dumb down brain surgery enough for a preschooler to think he understands it, the little tyke’s liable to grab a microwave scalpel and start cutting when no one’s looking. "
32 " Nature, though. Nature always welcomed him. She passed no judgements, didn’t care about right or wrong, guilt or innocence. "