Aurora

by Kim Stanley Robinson

An unsolvable problem: sentences linear, reality synchronous. Both however are temporal.

Much of human language is said to be fundamentally metaphorical. This is not good news. Metaphor, according to Aristotle, is an intuitive perception of a similarity in dissimilar things. However, what is a similarity? My Juliet is the sun: in what sense? A quick literature review suggests the similarities in metaphors are arbitrary, even random. They could be called metaphorical similarities, but no AI likes tautological formulations, because the halting problem can be severe, become a so-called Ouroboros problem, or a whirlpool with no escape: aha, a metaphor. Bringing together the two parts of a metaphor, called the vehicle and the tenor, is said to create a surprise. Which is not surprising: young girls like flowers? Waiters in a restaurant like planets orbiting Sol?

sorry, what?

Texts from Earth speak of the servile will. This was a way to explain the presence of evil, which is a word or a concept almost invariably used to condemn the Other, and never one’s true self. To make it more than just an attack on the Other, one must perhaps consider evil as a manifestation of the servile will. The servile will is always locked in a double bind: to have a will means the agent will indeed will various actions, following autonomous decisions made by a conscious mind; and yet at the same time this will is specified to be servile, and at the command of some other will that commands it. To attempt to obey both sources of willfulness is the double bind.

…

And together they scratched onto the flagstones of the plaza, the traditional saying for this moment, whenever it came to people parting ways, people who cared for each other: Wherever you go, there we are.

It would be good to know everything. Useful.

Indeed, it has to be said that the percentage of old human sayings and proverbs that are actually true is very far from 100 percent. Seems it may be less important that it be true than that it rhyme, or show alliteration or the like.

Concerning the nitrogen lack, the Martians were negotiating with the Saturnians to import nitrogen from Titan’s atmosphere, as it had become clear that Titan, for its own terraforming plans, had too much nitrogen. Transfer of that much nitrogen would be a Titanic chore, ha-ha, but again, not impossible.