Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories

by Hugh Howey

Success in art lies as much in the changing tastes of the crowd as in the offerings. There is a varied froth of material being generated at all times, much of it along narrow themes, and when the need from the audience becomes great enough, one stream of that art is rewarded.

There’s something to be gained by taking the opposing side as our own, really trying to empathize, imagine the bad guys are the good guys. With their motivations in mind, it becomes more difficult to dehumanize them and easier to understand them. It’s not something that comes easily—but I’m trying.

There is a wastefulness to humankind that we ignore when we assume it’s a contemporary and temporary problem. Instead of worshipping a past that never happened, we should look to a future that we might avoid.