“quote collages”
70 posts under this tag.
The text below was when I fell in love with China Mieville’s Perdido Street Station. I wasn’t sure for many pages, never one to care much for fantasy. But this, this is what fantasy should be.
Reading the book, as many things else, got interrupted by the exile, but I’ve been possessed downloading ebooks lately and I just found a great HTML version of the book. Let the reading recommence!
Isaac and Lin sat naked on either side of the bare wooden table. Isaac was conscious of their pose, seeing them as a third person might. It would make a beautiful, strange print, he thought. An attic room, dust-motes in the light from the small window, books and paper and paints neatly stacked by cheap wooden furniture. A dark-skinned man, big and nude and detumescing, gripping a knife and fork, unnaturally still, sitting opposite a khepri, her slight woman’s body in shadow, her chitinous head in silhouette.
They ignored their food and stared at each other for a moment. Lin signed at him: Good morning, lover. Then she began to eat, still looking at him.
It was when she ate that Lin was most alien, and their shared meals were a challenge and an affirmation.As he watched her, Isaac felt the familiar trill of emotion: disgust immediately stamped out, pride at the stamping out, guilty desire.
Light glinted in Lin’s compound eyes. Her headlegs quivered. She picked up half a tomato and gripped it with her mandibles. She lowered her hands while her inner mouthparts picked at the food her outer jaw held steady.
Isaac watched the huge iridescent scarab that was his lover’s head devour her breakfast.
He watched her swallow, saw her throat bob where the pale insectile underbelly segued smoothly into her human neck … not that she would have accepted that description. Humans have khepri bodies, legs, hands; and the heads of shaved gibbons, she had once told him.
He smiled and dangled his fried pork in front of him, curled his tongue around it, wiped his greasy fingers on the table. He smiled at her. She undulated her headlegs at him and signed, My monster.
I am a pervert, thought Isaac, and so is she.
There is no question that ideas and artifacts evolve, in the sense that they will start varying from one another, and some will be selected in preference to others, and then transmitted to a new generation. Most people assume that this cultural “evolution” is simply an extension of human evolution. After all, they argue, ideas and objects could not survive without us, and therefore they could not have an independent evolutionary history. But that is like saying that humans are part of the evolution of plants, since we could not survive without them. It is true that memes need our minds to exist and evolve, but then so do we require air, water, and photosynthesis, among other things, for our survival. Therefore it does not seem that memes are any more dependent on their environment than we are.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, The Evolving SelfAM
thought memes more than a cool metaphor before. Now I’m scared.
Each person creates the world he or she lives in by investing attention in certain things, and by doing so according to certain patterns. The world constructed on the blueprints provided by the genes is one in which all of a person’s attention is invested in furthering the agenda of “reproductive fitness.” This is a simple goal: How can I get enough out of the environment to make sure that I reproduce and that my children will also have children? In less complex organisms, like many species of insects, practically the entire life span is dedicated to the project of laying a clutch of eggs; promptly afterward, the parents expire. Like every other organism, the butterfly has evolved to see only those things that will either help or hinder the survival of its offspring. Its world is made up of flowery shapes that provide nectar, and shapes that resemble predators that are best avoided. Poets make much of the majestic eagle soaring freely among the snowy peaks. But the eyes of the eagle are generally focused on the ground, searching for rodents lurking in the shadows. The lives of much of humanity could be summed up in similar terms.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, The Evolving SelfAM
Flow was one of the best books I’ve ever read. I’m halfway through its sequel, The Evolving self, and I can already say the same for it. I’m already having trouble remembering meself before I started reading it—it’s one of those books that stretches and rewrites you as you read it. It’s also deeper than Flow, more speculative, darker—the whole first half has been about the (inevitable) obstacles to human freedom.
After reading Flow I felt confident happiness, joy, flow, would always be at hand, always within me. Yet I also realized that happiness, joy, and flow were not enough. The Evolving Self is about what’s missing.
It’s been a while now since I read this Reason interview to Peter Thiel but I’m still moved by it. The purpose of life is life. How mindblowing a concept, huh?
Thiel: One of the things that’s very misleading about acceleration and exponential growth is that it’s slow at first and then it’s fast, and so the future happens more slowly than people expect and then it happens more quickly.
reason: There’s another popular narrative for the 21st century that says humanity is going to wreck the planet. Are the environmentalist doomsayers right?
Thiel: My sense is that they’re not right. I’m not an expert on it, but what I think is different from climate-change catastrophe vs. the Singularity is that climate seems like such a pedestrian thing to talk about. You talk about it every day. There’s a tendency to overdramatize the climate, and it’s something everybody can have opinions about. So I don’t think there’s a cognitive bias where people are incapable of imagining the world’s climate changing. That seems like a very easy thing for people to imagine, and maybe it’s also an easy thing for people to get hysterical about. On the other hand, computers running the world or this radical progress of technology —that’s something where I think there’s just no imagination at all.
reason: Do you consider yourself a transhumanist?
Thiel: The problem with the label is that it suggests that we should run away from being human. Take the question of aging. If you define that as the essence of being human, then transhumanists are anti-aging and therefore you try to transcend this human limitation. I don’t think that death and life are inextricably interconnected in some sort of Eastern mystical sense in which for everything white there’s something black and there’s always a yin/yang type of thing. Every myth on this planet tells us the purpose of life is death, and I don’t think that’s true. I think the purpose of life is life.
Have only read 3 quotes of it and it may already be one of my favorite books ;)
Tears came to him. He wept quietly, holding nothing back. He mourned mankind, and the blindness of men, who thought that the Kosmos had rules and limits that would shelter them from their own freedom. There were no shelters. There were no final purposes. Futility, and freedom, were Absolute.
There’s a universe of potential, Lindsay, think of that. No rules, no limits.
Life moves in clades. A clade is a daughter species, a related descendant. It’s happened to other successful animals, and now it’s humanity’s turn. The factions still struggle, but the categories are breaking up. No faction can claim the one true destiny for mankind. Mankind no longer exists.
Surprisingly deep insights can be had ruminating about, you know, stuff.
...life is not about stuff; it’s about possibilities, which the right tools can enable.
Imagine the life you want to live. I cannot think of a sentence that has had more impact on the lives of people I have worked with. ... When clutter fills your home, not only does it block your space, but it also blocks your vision.
Get rid of the trash to make room for the treasures. Let the things that are important take center stage.
The biggest change in attitude this book made in my life was to teach me not to generate false relevance by “organizing” stuff I don’t want or will never need. Organization is what you do to stuff that you need, want, or love – it’s not what you do to get useless stuff out of sight or to manufacture makebelieve meaning.
I studied math in college because I didn’t believe it. Never could understand how or why someone would come up with the stuff we were being teached. Thanks to some innate verbal ability and motherly discipline, I was thankfully “good” at it though, good enough to realize that what we were “learning” was nothing but mindless regurgitation.
From Nick Bostrom’s Golden—a fictional interview of Albert, an uploaded dog. His cheeriness and good disposition are attributed to his being a golden retriever. His wisdom I attribute to Bostrom, who’s one fascinating philosopher (don’t miss the fable of the dragon tyrant!).
Larry King: What are your plans for the future?
Albert: I take one day at a time. I enjoy learning new things, playing games and talking with my friends. I just love being alive and savoring every new experience. It is so exciting and so much fun! I love it all so much, I wish it will never end!
Larry King: Do you even wonder about how you came to be so lucky?
Albert: Yes, I once asked Dr. Cole about that, and he said there was no scientific answer. Then I asked if there was an unscientific answer? And he said: “Well, there will be if you make one up”.
So then I went away and thought about that for while. I thought about Laika, the unlucky dog that they sent up into space, and all the other dogs that never became famous. I thought about the rabbits in the animal labs, the pet rabbits, and the rabbits in the wild. Then I thought about the foxes that ate the rabbits and the hounds that hunted the foxes. Then I thought about all the humans, and how some had been kings and some had been slaves; how some had had families and loved ones, and how some had died alone in the cold. And again I asked myself, how come I had been a lucky one? But I couldn’t think of any answer. Not even an unscientific one.
Larry King: (pause) Do feel that you have a mission?
Albert: I want everyone to be the lucky one.
Put the effort. ”An overemphasis on intellect or talent—and the implication that such traits are innate and fixed—leaves people vulnerable to failure, fearful of challenges and unmotivated to learn.” That, in a sentence, is Scientific American’s excellent The Secret to Raising Smart Kids. It’s really some of the best life advice you can get (intelligence is just a nice case example).
The result plays out in children like Jonathan, who coast through the early grades under the dangerous notion that no-effort academic achievement defines them as smart or gifted. Such children hold an implicit belief that intelligence is innate and fixed, making striving to learn seem far less important than being (or looking) smart. This belief also makes them see challenges, mistakes and even the need to exert effort as threats to their ego rather than as opportunities to improve. And it causes them to lose confidence and motivation when the work is no longer easy for them.
Praising children’s innate abilities, as Jonathan’s parents did, reinforces this mind-set, which can also prevent young athletes or people in the workforce and even marriages from living up to their potential. On the other hand, our studies show that teaching people to have a “growth mind-set,” which encourages a focus on effort rather than on intelligence or talent, helps make them into high achievers in school and in life.
[The other test group], meanwhile, focused on fixing errors and honing their skills. One [schoolchildren] advised himself: “I should slow down and try to figure this out.” Two schoolchildren were particularly inspiring. One, in the wake of difficulty, pulled up his chair, rubbed his hands together, smacked his lips and said, “I love a challenge!” The other, also confronting the hard problems, looked up at the experimenter and approvingly declared, “I was hoping this would be informative!” Predictably, the students with this attitude outperformed their cohorts in these studies.
In the growth mind-set classes, students read and discussed an article entitled “You Can Grow Your Brain.” They were taught that the brain is like a muscle that gets stronger with use and that learning prompts neurons in the brain to grow new connections. From such instruction, many students began to see themselves as agents of their own brain development. Students who had been disruptive or bored sat still and took note. One particularly unruly boy looked up during the discussion and said, “You mean I don’t have to be dumb?”
It’s a tough call, distinguishing talent from effort. Intimidation and discourage further muddle the waters. But the question is rather whether or not you want to get better. Talented or not, you will not get magically better without effort. Talented or not, you will get better with effort.
So rub your hands together, smack those lips, and join that wonderfully ridiculous schoolboy: “I love me a challenge!”
I love the anecdote because it makes the point so well and it rings so true. The statistic surpassed even my dire expectations. And yes, major labels should have acted years ago. May we learn something from their example.
IN 2006 EMI, the world’s fourth-biggest recorded-music company, invited some teenagers into its headquarters in London to talk to its top managers about their listening habits. At the end of the session the EMI bosses thanked them for their comments and told them to help themselves to a big pile of CDs sitting on a table. But none of the teens took any of the CDs, even though they were free. “That was the moment we realised the game was completely up,” says a person who was there.
In America, according to Nielsen SoundScan, the volume of physical albums sold dropped by 19% in 2007 from the year before—faster than anyone had expected.
Tim Renner, a former boss of Universal Music in Germany, says the majors should have acted years ago. “Then they had the money and could have built the competence by buying concert agencies and merchandise companies,” he says. Now it may be too late.
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