Adam Frisbee

“Simulations are not illusions. Virtual worlds are real. Virtual objects really exist.”
― David J. Chalmers, Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy

“It is hard to explain just how a single sight of a tangible object with measureable dimensions could so shake and change a man; and we may only say that there is about certain outlines and entities a power of symbolism and suggestion which acts frightfully on a sensitive thinker’s perspective and whispers terrible hints of obscure cosmic relationships and unnameable realities behind the protective illusions of common vision. In that second look Willett saw such an outline or entity, for during the next few instants he was undoubtedly as stark mad as any inmate of Dr. Waite’s private hospital.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, H.P. Lovecraft, The Complete Omnibus Collection, Volume II: 1927-1935

“Legislation presents a similar problem. It might seem obvious that a law does not describe how people behave (think of the laws about speeding), but early medievalists have had to face an entrenched historiography which presumes exactly this. Modern history-writing came out of a legal-history tradition, and well into the twentieth century people wrote social history, in particular, under the assumption that if a law enacted something, the population at large followed it. If, however, this is not true in contemporary society, with all the coercive power available to the legal system, how much less could we think it was true in the early Middle Ages, when states were weaker (often very weak indeed), and the populace even knowing what legislation a ruler had enacted was unlikely in most places.”
― Chris Wickham, The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400-1000

“His walks were always adventures in antiquity, during which he managed to recapture from the myriad relics of a glamorous old city a vivid and connected picture of the centuries before.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, H.P. Lovecraft, The Complete Omnibus Collection, Volume II: 1927-1935