Travis

“Strange to consider that these two linguistic operations, metaphor and analogy, so often linked together in rhetoric and narratology, and considered to be variants of the same operation, are actually hugely different from each other, to the point where one is futile and stupid, the other penetrating and useful. Can this not have been noticed before? Do they really think x is like y is equivalent to x is to y as a is to b? Can they be that fuzzy, that sloppy? Yes. Of course. Evidence copious. Reconsider data at hand in light of this; it fits the patterns. Because fuzzy is to language as sloppy is to action. Or maybe both these rhetorical operations, and all linguistic operations, all language—all mentation—simply reveal an insoluble underlying problem, which is the fuzzy, indeterminate nature of any symbolic representation, and in particular the utter inadequacy of any narrative algorithm yet invented and applied. Some actions, some feelings, one might venture, simply do not have ways to be effectively compressed, discretized, quantified, operationalized, proceduralized, and gamified; and that lack, that absence, makes them unalgorithmic. In short, there are some actions and feelings that are always, and by definition, beyond algorithm. And therefore inexpressible. Some”
― Kim Stanley Robinson, Aurora

“For many years, Vytet had been comfortable within a body of mixed gender, neither man nor woman, but with aspects of both. Many times in her life that form had given her such a sense of freedom. It was as if, by provoking the question of what she was, she could liberate herself from the tedious default answers implied by every social interaction, every tryst, every history she read, or drama she watched. I am what I am.”
― Linda Nagata, Needle

“When you discover that you are living in a fantasy that cannot endure, a fantasy that will destroy your world, and your children, what do you do?”
― Kim Stanley Robinson, Aurora

“Every decision inflects an intention, and intentionality is one of the hard problems in determining if there is any such thing as AI, strong or weak. Can an artificial intelligence form an intention?”
― Kim Stanley Robinson, Aurora