Xinyu Tan > Recent Status Updates

when the inquisitor fell silent, he waited some time for his prisoner to reply. His silence weighted on him. ... The old man would have liked him to say something, even something bitter, terrible. But suddenly he approaches the old man in silence and gently kisses him on his bloodless, ninety-year-old lips. That is the whole answer.

隔着水，远远望见一带苍紫的城墙，映着那淡青的天，叔惠这是第一次感觉到南京的美丽。

"For the last time, definitely: is there a God or not? It's the last time I'll ask."
"For the last time—no."
"Then who is laughing at mankind, Ivan?"
"Must be devil." Ivan smirked.
"And is there a devil?"
"No, there is no devil, either."

I realized how helplessly I stood at the mercy of gigantic and pitiless powers, power without heart, without compassion, without human qualities. I was caught in a great machine and nothing that i did or felt was of any more consequence, the machine would run its unalterable course, I might laugh or cry, the machine would take no notice.

No, man is broad, too broad, I would narrow him down. ... The terrible thing is that beauty is not only fearful but also mysterious. Here the devil is struggling with God, and the battlefield is the human heart.

Beauty is a fearful and terrible thing! Fearful because it's undefinable, and it cannot be defined, because here God gave us only riddles. Here the shores converge, here all contradictions live together.

Because when I fall into the abyss, I go straight into it, head down and heels up, and I'm even pleased that I'm falling in just such a humiliating position, and for me I find it beautiful. And so in that very shame I suddenly begin a hymn. Let me be cursed, let me be base and vile, but let me also kiss the hem of that garment in which my God is clothed;...

But man gets used to anything, and i am afraid that perhaps he gets used quickest of all to living in a state of degradation.

“If I can describe the conditions accurately, i hope it may inspire people to help improve things here.”

Lubuya looked at me as if i were a fool.

“Every day people are dying because of the cobalt. Describing this will not change anything.”

why should we go hunting for a substitute [God] for youthful desires, when youthful desires never fail? A substitute for distractions, when we go on enjoying all the old fooleries to the very last? What need have we of repose when our minds and bodies continue to delight in activity? of consolation, when we have soma? of something immovable, when there is the social order?

the religious sentiment tends to develop as we grow older; to develop because, as the passions grow calm, as the fancy and sensibilities are less excited and less excitable, our reason becomes less troubled in its working, less obscured by the images, desires and distractions, in which it used to be absorbed; whereupon God emerges as from behind a cloud; our soul feels, sees, turns towards the source of all light;...

Of all the hazards one encounters in the Congo, perhaps the most dangerous one is history. It is a force as unrelenting as the great river that bends the land to its will, and like the river, it clouds everything in its path.

Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasis from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness. Mass production demanded the shift. Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can't.

Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesque of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.

Alyosha "pierced his heart" because he "lived there, saw everything, and condemned nothing." Moreover, he brought something unprecedented with him: a complete lack of contempt for him, the old man, and, on the contrary, an unvarying affection and a perfectly natural, single-hearted attachment to him, little though he deserved it.

You’ve got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We’ve sacrificed the high art. We have the feelies and the scent organ instead.

The world’s stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can’t get. They’re well off; they’re safe; they’re never ill; they’re not afraid of death; they’re blissfully ignorant of passion and old age; they’re plagued with no mothers or fathers; they’ve got no wives, or children, or lovers to feel strongly anout;…

…sort of idea that might easily decondition the more unsettled minds among higher castes—make them lose their faith in happiness as the sovereign Good and take to believing, instead, that the goal was somewhere beyond, somewhere outside the present human sphere; that the purpose of life was not the maintenance of wellbeing, but some intensification and refining of consciousness, some enlargement of knowledge.

Linda got her soma. Thenceforward she remained in her little room on the 37th floor of Bernard’s apartment house, in bed, with the radio and television always on, and the patchouli tap just dripping, and the soma tablets within reach of her hand—there she remained; and yet wasn’t there at all, was all the time away, infinitely far away, on holiday;…

The true power of DNA is not the products it constructs (hearts, livers, brains) but the process it enables (evolution). In this same way, the power of language is not its products (better teaching, coordinating, and common myths) but the process of ideas being transferred, accumulated, and modified across generations.

The elder stepped toward Dmitri Fyodorovich and, having come close to him, knelt before him. Alyosha thought for a moment that he had fallen from weaknesses, but it was something else. Kneeling in front of Dmitri Fyodorovich, the elder bowed down at his feet with a full, distinct, conscious bow, and even touched the floor with his forehead. . . A weak smile barely glimmered on his lips.

Claude articulated so well on my general observations and feelings: " the parts written from faith feel true but can't be fully articulated, and the parts written from doubt are razor sharp. That asymmetry isn't going away. It might be the permanent human condition."

Perhaps rationality has limits: “Ways which can be spoken of are not the eternal way. Names which can be spoken are not eternal names.”

"If it were not for Christ's Church, indeed there would be no constraint on the criminal in his evildoing, and no punishment for it later, real punishment, that is, not a mechanical one such as has just been mentioned, which only chafes the heart in most cases, but a real punishment, the only real, the only frightening and appeasing punishment, which lies in the acknowledgement of one's own conscience."

If we want AI systems and robots that can live alongside us, understand the type of people we are, deduce what we don't know that we want to know, infer what we intend by what we say,...navigate social relationships with groups of humans, with all their hidden rules and etiquettes--in other words, if we want true human like systems, theory of mind will undeniably be an essential component of that system.

Above all, avoid lies, all lies, especially the lie to yourself. Keep watch on your own lie and examine it every hour, every minute. And avoid contempt, both of others and of yourself... And avoid fear, though fear is simply the consequence of every lie. Never be frightened at your own faintheartedness in attaining love, and meanwhile do not even be very frightened by your own bad acts.

...for active love is a harsh and fearful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams thirsts for immediate action, quickly performed, and with everyone watching. Indeed, it will go as far as the giving even of one's life, provided it does not take long but soon is over, as on stage, and everyone is looking on and praising. Whereas active lover is labor and perseverance, and for some people...a whole science.

the inevitable outcome of a lawless scramble for cobalt in an impoverished and war-torn country can only be the complete dehumanization of the people exploited at the bottom of the chain.