Quotes from Ted Chiang

but she can't deny the realities of modern neuropharmacology: if her brain is flooded with oxytocin every time she's training Sophonce digients, it's going to have an effect on her feelings toward them whether she wants it to or not.

Playtime's over, Jax," she says. "Time to do your homework.

Beauty has undergone a similar process, thanks to advertisers. Evolution gave us a circuit that responds to good looks—call it the pleasure receptor for our visual cortex—and in our natural environment, it was useful to have. But take a person with one-in-a-million skin and bone structure, add professional makeup and retouching, and you're no longer looking at beauty in its natural form. You've got pharmaceutical-grade beauty, the cocaine of good looks.

A number of human adolescents have complained that Voyl has more rights than they do; obviously the digients have seen their comments.

He had come to visit every day, even though she refused to see him at first, so that he wouldn't be absent when she did want to see him.

Turning Marco and Polo into corporations opens the door to keeping them running after Derek himself has passed away, which is a worrisome prospect: for Down syndrome individuals, there are organizations that provide assistance to people living on their own, but similar support services don't exist for incorporated digients.

Most of the other employees have been through company collapses before, so while they're unhappy, for them this is just another episode of life in the software industry.

There have always been arguments showing that free will is an illusion, some based on hard physics, others based on pure logic. Most people agree these arguments are irrefutable, but no one ever really accepts the conclusion. The experience of having free will is too powerful for an argument to overrule. What it takes is a demonstration, and that's what a Predictor provides.

Being in the presence of a world-class beauty can be as thrilling as listening to a world-class soprano. Gifted individuals aren't the only ones who benefit from their gifts; we all do. Or, I should say, we all can. Depriving ourselves of that opportunity would be a crime.

transcranial magnetic stimulation

Whatever he decides to do, he'll have to do it without Wendy; they've decided to file for divorce. The reasons are complicated, of course, but one thing is clear: raising a pair of digients is not what Wendy wants from life, and if Derek wants a partner in this endeavor, he'll have to find someone else.

Stratton was at a loss. Ashbourne seemed disappointed, and continued. "The next step was to artificially induce the growth of an embryo from an ovum, by application of a name.

Calli doesn't mean that you'll never see anyone as beautiful. When you see a smile that's genuine, you'll see beauty. When you see an act of courage or generosity, you'll see beauty. Most of all, when you look at someone you love, you'll see beauty. All calli does is keep you from being distracted by surfaces. True beauty is what you see with the eyes of love, and that's something that nothing can obscure.

After I've translated all that I know into this language, the patterns I seek should become evident.

Minha mensagem para vocês é: finjam que têm livre-arbítrio. É essencial para vocês se comportarem como se suas decisões tivessem importância, mesmo sabendo que não têm. A realidade não importa: o que importa é a sua crença, porque acreditar nessa mentira é a única maneira de evitar o coma lúcido. A civilização depende agora da autoilusão. Talvez sempre tenha dependido.

Yet through their endeavor, men would glimpse the unimaginable artistry of Yahweh's work, in seeing how ingeniously the world had been constructed. By this construction, Yahweh's work was indicated, and Yahweh's work was concealed.

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 reduce to the workings of physical law. Every act of volition is, like the creation of the universe, a first cause.

Fate laughs at (wo)men's schemes.

Despite knowing the journey and where it leads, I embrace it and welcome every moment.

some of the core assumptions on which your self-image is built are actually lies.

To Stephen Hawking and all others younger than myself I say, "Be patient. Your future will come to you and lie down at your feet like a dog who knows and loves you no matter what you are.

This is the story of a man named Neil Fisk, and how he came to love God.

the ray of light has to know where it will ultimately end up before it can choose the direction to begin moving in.

This confirms a long-held belief of mine that lexical order induces thermodynamic order. The lexical order of an amulet reinforces the order a body already possesses, thus providing protection against damage. The lexical order of an animating name increases the order of a body, thus providing motive power for an automaton.