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8,969 voters
This was why the world would never build another humanoid AI. The smile was perfect. Sincere, unaffected. Fully human. And because of that, the smile was like the shadow of your own death. Evrim’s existence implicated yours.
“No more social media, no more scrolling through litanies of dreams and nervous hopes and photographs of lunches, cries for help and expressions of contentment and relationship-status updates with heart icons whole or broken, plans to meet up later, pleas, complaints, desires, pictures of babies dressed as bears or peppers for Halloween. No more reading and commenting on the lives of others, and in so doing, feeling slightly less alone in the room. No”
― Station Eleven
― Station Eleven
“It turns out the unconscious mind is better at making complex decisions than is the conscious mind114. The conscious mind just can’t handle as many variables, apparently. Quoth one of the researchers: “At some point in our evolution, we started to make decisions consciously, and we’re not very good at it.”115”
― Blindsight
― Blindsight
“But I’d guess that at least one thing an automaton lacks is empathy; if you can’t feel, you can’t really relate to something that does, even if you act as though you do. Which makes it interesting to note how many sociopaths show up in the world’s upper echelons, hmm? How ruthlessness and bottom-line self-interest are so lauded up in the stratosphere, while anyone showing those traits at ground level gets carted off into detention with the Realists. Almost as if society itself is being reshaped from the inside out.” “Oh, come on. Society was always pretty— Wait, you’re saying the world’s corporate elite are nonsentient?”
― Blindsight
― Blindsight
“Yeah, but sociopaths don’t blend in well.” “Maybe the ones that get diagnosed don’t, but by definition they’re the bottom of the class. The others are too smart to get caught, and real automatons would do even better. Besides, when you get powerful enough, you don’t need to act like other people. Other people start acting like you.” Sascha whistled. “Wow. Perfect play-actor.” “Or not so perfect. Sound like anyone we know?”
― Blindsight
― Blindsight
“And the answer, said the judge. If God meant to interfere in the degeneracy of mankind would he not have done so by now? Wolves cull themselves, man. What other creature could? And is the race of man not more predacious yet? The way of the world is to bloom and to flower and die but in the affairs of men there is no waning and the noon of his expression signals the onset of night. His spirit is exhausted at the peak of its achievement. His meridian is at once his darkening and the evening of his day. He loves games? Let him play for stakes. This you see here, these ruins wondered at by tribes of savages, do you not think that this will be again? Aye. And again. With other people, with other sons.”
― Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West
― Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West
Rob’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Rob’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
461 books
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1,273 books
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2,762 books
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646 books
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176 books
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253 books
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101 friends
154 books
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18 friends
757 books
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