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we can’t even prove that reality exists beyond the mind of the first-person dreamer.
And when your surpassing creations find the answers you asked for, you can’t understand their analysis and you can’t verify their answers. You have to take their word on faith—
LEADERS ARE VISIONARIES WITH A POORLY DEVELOPED SENSE OF FEAR AND NO CONCEPT OF THE ODDS AGAINST THEM. —Robert Jarvik
To the Historians, tools existed for only one reason: to force the universe into unnatural shapes. They treated nature as an enemy, they were by definition a rebellion against the way things were.
Technology is a stunted thing in benign environments, it never thrived in any culture gripped by belief in natural harmony. Why invent fusion reactors if your climate is comfortable, if your food is abundant? Why build fortresses if you have no enemies? Why force change upon a world that poses no threat?
And if the best toys do end up in the hands of those who’ve never forgotten that life itself is an act of war against intelligent opponents, what does that say about a race whose machines travel between the stars?
Maybe she honestly didn’t know that we were evolutionary enemies, that all relationships were doomed to failure.
WHY SHOULD MAN EXPECT HIS PRAYER FOR MERCY TO BE HEARD BY WHAT IS ABOVE HIM WHEN HE SHOWS NO MERCY TO WHAT IS UNDER HIM? —Pierre Troubetzkoy
Brains are survival engines, not truth detectors. If self-deception promotes fitness, the brain lies. Stops noticing—irrelevant things. Truth never matters. Only fitness. By now you don’t experience the world as it exists at all. You experience a simulation built from assumptions. Shortcuts. Lies. Whole species is agnosiac by default. Rorschach does nothing to you that you don’t already do to yourselves.”
Why should nonsentient systems be inherently inferior?
What’s the difference between being dead, and just not knowing you’re alive?”
