The Thing Itself

by Adam Roberts

But the way we process that data is distinctive to us. Space, time, and these categories, these are in our perceiving mind, not in the thing in itself.’

‘Isn’t your job to make things neat and clean?’

So clever relating to both employments

‘You have some magic access to things that doesn’t involve observing them, do you?’

So we perceive the thing in itself, and that data comes in, and our minds convert it into space, time, causality and so on. We can’t help doing that. It’s how we work.’

And we’ve discovered that, once you abandon the notion of trying to copy human consciousness, AI is really quite easy to achieve.’

‘I’m going to be sick,’ I said. And indeed a hot sensation of nausea was churning through my gut.

Interesting he is experiencing nausea, were german sausages on the breakfast menu. I've had it off and on over a year now

possibility, existence and necessity.

P.E.N.

and the star Sirius

Of course it would be Sirius

of the black slab from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Or a fridge in some dystopian novel

sat nav

I like this term, I've only heard GPS used around here

sigil on my phone.

Of course he uses the term sigil

and walked through the magic doorway

Of course

‘Of course!’

Of course he says of course after me using the phrase twice in a row in notations

‘The drill, you know it.

As in dentist, actually I was gonna mention Clarice meeting Hannibal for the first time in Silence of the lambs

hardly Hannibal Lecter.’

Love it

‘This one’s orange,’ said my chaperone. ‘Here to see Curtius.’

My brain reordered the letters in his name to citrus

Ich habe nicht nöthig zu denken, wenn ich nur bezahlen kann.’

‘My liver and nice bottle of Chianti?

LOL

Molly

&d a blacke throne,

A Roy -al throne

it uncomforts the boy. Molly

The agony and ectasy ha!

&d it is just as Certaine that without this Act of Creating, God was Nothing.

Like how he's tying this to Kant

Sainte Peter himselfe!

Hmmm or is that saint Peta??

right here – right now. Right here – right now.

Jesus jones?

Toyota Prius

A hybrid moment

see where Peta had fallen. A van ran him over, and then a car, and then another. The lights turned amber, the traditional signal for British drivers to accelerate noisily and move more speedily still through the junction.

Same in canada

‘Close encounters of the north kind,’

LOL

‘438 Petaflop JCO Supercomputer.

And hear i thought peta was something to do with the animal rights group i would've Bete on it

equivalent of exposing your body to minus thirty-seven degrees for a length of time. You see?’

Bet that hit home with mr. 7 finger

‘It’s not ideal ethics, I appreciate. But the alternative is much worse,

Have I told you the tale of Jack Glass

It was an automatic,

Over here automatic has become standard

Every single one!

Gotta collect them all. Pika-choooo!

Do what you will the whole of the law,

I like the idea of taking Crowley and giving it one hardwired tweak

own culture:

And cultures too

+, to emulate them, I have contracted this Disease. + it has enabled me to make money within the Fansoc for Money + Media of Exchange at a much more rapid rate than my other Fansoccers,

The closer human consciousness looks at the cosmos, the more attention it pays to the cosmos, the bigger that cosmos gets.

Makes me think of the rise and fall of d.o.d.o.

team measured it at 200 billion light years.

Oh, prison isn’t the best way of putting it. I mean: if you’re a chess piece, would you regard the squares on the board, and the rules determining how you can move, prisons?

And there's chess in prison, thinking of Shawshank redemption

Animals perceive the cosmos in terms of time and space, causality and accident and all that. Don’t they?

Having a coversation about animals with peta

Ferry Company.

Lots of fairy tales with somekind of time distortion

You tried in Antarctica, you’re going to finish the job in the Arctic.’

It's a polarizing discussion

Cain to your Abel.

Yet he's the one with the marked face

Yet brains may suffer substantial physical damage without a change in personality, and brain tissue may be entirely whole and perfect and the personality alter, or lose sanity, or disappear.

As an atheist writing a novel about why you should believe in God,

This should be a tag line on the cover