Quotes from Ted Chiang

Because I think there are events of another category that are likewise not fixed in a causal chain: acts of volition. Free will is a kind of miracle; when we make a genuine choice, we bring about a result that cannot be reduced to the workings of physical law. Every act of volition is, like the creation of the universe, a first cause.

they simply trusted that God was, directly or indirectly, responsible for their good fortune. Their devotion had never been put to any serious test, and might not have withstood one; their love for God was based in their satisfaction with the status quo.

I would have liked to experience more of the heptapods' worldview, to feel the way they feel. Then, perhaps I could immerse myself fully in the necessity of events, as the must, instead of merely wading in its surf for the rest of my life.

They couldn't have come into being with minds as blank as newborn infants, because they'd have rapidly starved to death in such a scenario.

My new language is taking shape. It is gestalt oriented, rendering it beautifully suited for thought, but impractical for writing or speech.

I've gone into the outside world to reobserve society. The sign language of emotion I once knew has been replaced by a matrix of interrelated equations. Lines of force twist and elongate between people, objects, institutions, ideas. The individuals are tragically like marionettes, independently animate but bound by a web they choose not to see; they could resist if they wished, but so few of them do.

Speaking this language would be out of the question, given the limited bandwidth of the human larynx.

akinetic mutism,

El corazón de cada Pronostic consiste en un circuito con un retraso negativo del tiempo; envía una señal atrás en el tiempo.

Physical law is what makes it possible to study the past; examine the state of the universe closely enough, and we can infer its state a moment earlier in time.

Each moment follows inexorably from the previous one and is followed inexorably by the next, links forged in a causal chain.

Based on our experience with human minds, it takes at least twenty years of steady effort to produce a useful person, and I see no reason that teaching an artificial being would go any faster.

But the moment of creation is where all causal chains end; inference can lead us back to this moment and no further.

In 1936, Gerhard Gentzen provided a proof of the consistency of arithmetic, but to do it he needed to use a controversial technique known as transfinite induction. This technique is not among the usual methods of proof, and it hardly seemed appropriate for guaranteeing the consistency of arithmetic. What Gentzen had done was prove the obvious by assuming the doubtful.

I believe the primordial humans made a choice. They found themselves in a world full of possibilities but with no guidance as to what to do.

instead, they sought to improve themselves so that they might become masters of their world.

No one relishes the prospect of humans being conceived artificially. But can you offer an alternative?

Four things do not come back: the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity," and

But if it's in fact true that you have no purpose in mind for me, then that sense of fulfillment has arisen solely from within myself.

Minds don't grow the way weeds do, flourishing under indifferent attention; otherwise all children in orphanages would thrive. For a mind to even approach its full potential, it needs cultivation by other minds.

This search is my purpose; not because you chose it for me, Lord, but because I chose it for myself.

A child born of this method would have no biological father." "True, but the father's biological contribution is of minimal importance here. The mother will think of her husband as the child's father, so her imagination will impart a combination of her own and her husband's appearance and character to the foetus. That will not change. And I hardly need mention that name impression would not be made available to unmarried women.

Hassan stared at the boy for a long moment, and then his anger faded, and he let him go. When next he saw his older self, Hassan asked him, "Why did you not warn me about the pickpocket?" "Did you not enjoy the experience?

What she did pay attention to was that same sense of rightness, possessed by every theorem she learned, as insistent as the tiles' physicality, and as exact as their fit.