“Adam, we can’t make being safe the guiding principle of our lives. We have to be who we are—we can only do what we do, sweetie.”
― The Last Chairlift
― The Last Chairlift
“Taking spooky free will off the table means we can also put to rest a persistent but misguided concern about whether or not determinism is true. In physics and in philosophy, determinism is the proposal that all events in the universe are completely determined by previously existing physical causes. The alternative to determinism is that chance is built into the universe from the ground up, whether through fluctuations in a quantum soup or through some other as yet unknown principles of physics. Whether determinism matters for free will has been the topic of endless debate. My former boss Gerald Edelman summed it up well with a provocative one-liner: Free will – whatever you think about it, we’re determined to have it.”
― Being You: A New Science of Consciousness
― Being You: A New Science of Consciousness
“The tendency to create powerful things with unintended consequences started not with the invention of the steam engine or AI but with the invention of religion. Prophets and theologians have summoned powerful spirits that were supposed to bring love and joy but occasionally ended up flooding the world with blood.”
― Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI
― Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI
“Okay,” I said. There are these moments when you see the course of your life unfolding, and you feel powerless to alter it.”
― The Last Chairlift
― The Last Chairlift
“This particular view will be better understood if I say that truly hopeless thought just happens to be defined by the opposite criteria and that the tragic work might be the work that, after all future hope is exiled, describes the life of a happy man. The more exciting life is, the more absurd is the idea of losing it.”
― The Myth of Sisyphus
― The Myth of Sisyphus
Aidan’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Aidan’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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