Echopraxia (Firefall, #2)

by Peter Watts

Scientific insights have proven to be better predictors than Spiritual ones, at least in worldly matters; they prevail not because they are true, but simply because they work.

people have an unfortunate habit of assuming they understand the reality just because they understood the analogy.

“That’s like a chimp asking why those hairless apes aren’t slinging bigger feces than everyone else, if they’re so damned clever.”

I COULD BE BOUNDED IN A NUTSHELL AND COUNT MYSELF A KING OF INFINITE SPACE, WERE IT NOT THAT I HAVE BAD DREAMS. —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

A chance to glimpse the traces of an alien intelligence—whatever alien meant in a world where members of his own species stitched themselves together into colony minds, or summoned their own worst nightmares back from the Pleistocene to run the stock market.

Good parasites are invisible; the best are indispensable. Gut bacteria, chloroplasts, mitochondria: all parasites, once.

“They’re not gods,” Brüks reminded him softly. “Not yet.” “Not ever.” “That’s denial.” “Better than genuflection.”

even chickenshits have more kids than corpses do.

once you recognize that every human model of reality is fundamentally unreal, then it all just comes down to which one works best.

Here in the dusk of the twenty-first century it was so easy to confuse murder with the amputation of a fingertip.

I HAVE NEVER FOR ONE INSTANT SEEN CLEARLY WITHIN MYSELF. HOW THEN WOULD YOU HAVE ME JUDGE THE DEEDS OF OTHERS? —MAURICE MAETERLINCK

you may be doing everything for the wrong reasons and you may be pissing yourself when you do it, but at least you haven’t given up.

Long before art and science and philosophy arose, consciousness had but one function: not to merely implement motor commands, but to mediate between commands in opposition.

A neuron didn’t know whether it fired in response to a scent or a symphony. Brain cells weren’t intelligent; only brains were. And brain cells weren’t even the lower limit. The origins of thought were buried so deep they predated multicellular life itself: neurotransmitters in choanoflagellates, potassium ion gates in Monosiga.