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“I think that many confuse ‘applicability’ with ‘allegory’; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.”
― The Lord of the Rings
― The Lord of the Rings
“The greatest obstacle to pleasure is not pain; it is delusion.”
― The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
― The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
“Increasing rates of change, together with constant or increasing lifespans, generically imply that individual lifetimes now see more change in capacity and in values. This creates more scope for conflict, wherein older generations dislike the values of younger more-powerful generations with whom their lives overlap.”
― Singularity Hypotheses: A Scientific and Philosophical Assessment
― Singularity Hypotheses: A Scientific and Philosophical Assessment
“Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote: ‘For life in the present there is no death. Death is not an event in life. It is not a fact in the world.”
― The Vikings: A New History
― The Vikings: A New History
“We should resist the temptation to roll every normatively desirable attribute into one giant amorphous concept of mental functioning, as though one could never find one admirable trait without all the others being equally present. Instead, we should recognize that there can exist instrumentally powerful information processing systems—intelligent systems—that are neither inherently good nor reliably wise.”
― Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies
― Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies
Van’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Van’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
116 books
|
46 friends
158 books
|
8 friends
464 books
|
90 friends
208 books
|
71 friends
222 books
|
61 friends
293 books
|
148 friends
214 books
|
139 friends
114 books
|
55 friends
More friends…
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