Most science-fiction movies actually tell a very old story: the victory of mind over matter. Thirty thousand years ago, the story went like this: “Mind imagines a stone knife; hand creates a knife; human kills mammoth.” But the truth is that humans gained control of the world not so much by inventing knives and killing mammoths as by manipulating human minds. The mind is not the subject that freely shapes historical actions and biological realities; the mind is an object that is being shaped by history and biology. Even our most cherished ideals—freedom, love, creativity—are like a stone knife
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