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November 29 - November 30, 2018
Sometimes, the best answer is a more interesting question.) The point here is that stability is not about what a system is actually doing: it is about how the system would change if you disturbed it. Stability, by definition, deals with ‘what if?’.
Sometimes scientists change their minds. New developments cause a rethink. If this bothers you, consider how much damage is being done to the world by people for whom new developments do not cause a rethink.
Wizards can put up with any amount of deprivation and discomfort, provided it is not happening to them.
Given the choice between our blowing up the world and the enemy blowing up the world, it was obvious what to do. That is, on reflection, not a happy sentence.
That story ends with it swimming off into the cool depths of space, orbited by eight baby turtles (who appear to have gone off on their own, and perhaps even now support very small Discworlds) …
The first question was from a girl of about 15, who asked ‘You believe in evolution, don’t you, sir?’ The teacher went on about it not being a ‘proper’ question, but Jack answered it anyway, saying – rather pretentiously –‘No, I don’t believe in evolution, like people believe in God … Science and technology are not advanced by people who believe, but by people who don’t know but are doing their best to find out … steam engine … spinning jenny … television …’
if alive today he would definitely wear a bad tie.
The characteristic feature of narrativium is that it makes stories hang together. The human mind loves a good dose of narrativium.
Science certainly does not claim to get things right, but it has a good record of ruling out ways to get things wrong.
It is known that knowledge is power, and power is energy, and energy is matter, and matter is mass, and therefore large accumulations of knowledge distort time and space. This is why all bookshops look alike, and why all second-hand bookshops seem so much bigger on the inside – and why all libraries, everywhere, are connected.
Extelligence learned. Among many other things, it learned to fear.
No, we can’t destroy the Earth. We can destroy ourselves.
The fact that nature deals the occasional death blow doesn’t hand us an excuse to imitate it. We invented ethics.
