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“Evil is Evil. Lesser, greater, middling… Makes no difference. The degree is arbitary. The definition’s blurred. If I’m to choose between one evil and another… I’d rather not choose at all.”
― The Last Wish
― The Last Wish
“...She wasn't anyone special. She wasn't that brave, that clever or that strong. She was just somebody that felt cramped by the confines of her life. She was just somebody who had to get out. And she did it! She went out past Vega, out past Moulquet and Lambard! She saw places that aren't even there anymore! And do you know what she said? Her most famous quotation? "Anybody could have done it”
― The Ballad of Halo Jones
― The Ballad of Halo Jones
“Of course, no one’s immune to these biases; I’ve caught myself cherry-picking data on more than one occasion. To that extent we all live in glass houses. But there are ways of error-checking yourself, if you care to use them. The scientific method, at its heart, is a set of tools explicitly designed to break through bias and shine a light on the empirical information underneath. Recognizing our prejudices, we can overcome them. But one thing we cannot do—and it has taken me so very long to realize this—is reason successfully with those who reject such tools. Logic doesn’t matter to a Jehovah’s Witness. Fossils mean nothing to a creationist. All the data in the world will not change the mind of a true climate-change denier.4 You cannot reason with these people. You cannot take them seriously. It is a waste of energy to even try.”
― Peter Watts Is An Angry Sentient Tumor: Revenge Fantasies and Essays
― Peter Watts Is An Angry Sentient Tumor: Revenge Fantasies and Essays
“People aren't rational. We're not thinking machines, we're - we're feeling machines that happen to think.”
― Blindsight
― Blindsight
“Hell, Neil Gaiman took a classic that nine-year-old Peter Watts devoured without any trouble at all—Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book—and dumbed it down to an (admittedly award-winning) story about ghosts and vampires, aimed at an audience who might find a story about sapient wolves and tigers too challenging. It may only be a matter of time before Nineteen Eighty Four is reissued using only words from the Eleventh Edition of the Newspeak Dictionary.”
― Peter Watts Is An Angry Sentient Tumor: Revenge Fantasies and Essays
― Peter Watts Is An Angry Sentient Tumor: Revenge Fantasies and Essays
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