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Am not going to argue whether a machine can ‘really’ be alive, ‘really’ be self-aware. Is a virus self-aware? Nyet. How about oyster? I doubt it. A cat? Almost certainly. A human? Don’t know about you, tovarishch, but I am.
Sometimes is difficult to reach meeting of minds with machines; they can be very pig-headed
I wasn’t impressed. As it says in Bible, God fights on side of heaviest artillery.
He’s ignorant. No, not ignorant, he knows enormously more than I, or you, or any man who ever lived. Yet he doesn’t know anything.’
‘So it is with revolution. Organization must be no larger than necessary – never recruit anyone merely because he wants to join. Nor seek to persuade for the pleasure of having another share your views.
there will be an educational organization but it must be separate; agitprop is no part of basic structure.
history shows that a cell of three is best – more than three can’t agree on when to have dinner, much less when to strike.
Under what circumstances is it moral for a group to do that which is not moral for a member of that group to do alone?’
In terms of morals there is no such thing as a “state.” Just men. Individuals. Each responsible for his own acts.’
I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.’
Revolution is an art that I pursue rather than a goal I expect to achieve. Nor is this a source of dismay; a lost cause can be as spiritually satisfying as a victory.’
Don’t explain computers to laymen. Simpler to explain sex to a virgin.
But bear in mind that an auditor must assume that machines are honest.
used to question Mike’s endless reading of fiction, wondering what notions he was getting. But turned out he got a better feeling for human life from stories that he had been able to garner from facts; fiction gave him a gestalt of life, one taken for granted by a human; he lives it. Besides this ‘humanizing’ effect, Mike’s substitute for experience, he got ideas from ‘not-true data’ as he called fiction. How to hide a catapult he got from Edgar Allan Poe.
Women are amazing creatures – sweet, soft, gentle, and far more savage than we are. Let
Certain types of loudmouthism should be a capital offense among decent people.
Hadn’t realized ‘Free Luna’ was going to have taxes. Hadn’t had any before and got along. You paid for what you got. Tanstaafl. How else?
Must be a yearning deep in human heart to stop other people from doing as they please. Rules, laws – always for other fellow.
This is why parliamentary bodies all through history, when they accomplished anything, owed it to a few strong men who dominated the rest.
‘Never mind financial aspects. Anything which is physically possible can always be made financially possible; money is a bugaboo of small minds.
‘Sovereign,’ like ‘love,’ means anything you want it to mean; it’s a word in dictionary between ‘sober’ and ‘sozzled.’
Is mixed-up place another way; they care about skin color –
A managed democracy is a wonderful thing, Manuel, for the managers … and its greatest strength is a “free press” when “free” is defined as “responsible”
Nor would anybody suspect. If was one thing all people took for granted, was conviction that if you feed honest figures into a computer, honest figures come out. Never doubted it myself till I met a computer with sense of humor.
There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.’
