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“I want to go with you.”
Yesssss
There are eccentrics, even criminals.” “Do you want eccentrics and criminals?” “Why not? You and I are eccentrics. We’re certainly not typical of the people living on Terminus. As for criminals, that’s a matter of definition. And if criminals are the price we must pay for rebels, heretics, and geniuses, I’m willing to pay it. I demand the price be paid.” “Are criminals the only possible payment? Can’t you have genius without criminals?”
“Exactly. You have grasped the basic justification of Gaia’s existence. You, as a human individual, are composed of perhaps fifty trillion cells, but you, as a multicellular individual, are far more important than those fifty trillion as the sum of their individual importance. Surely you would agree with that.
“In many ways, it isn’t,” said Pelorat, “but a determined and powerful government can weaken it greatly. If it is sufficiently weakened, early history comes to depend on scattered material and tends to degenerate into folk tales. Invariably such folk tales will fill with exaggeration and come to show the sector to be older and more powerful than, in all likelihood, it ever really was. And no matter how silly a particular legend is, or how impossible it might be on the very face of it, it becomes a matter of patriotism among the locals to believe it. I can show you tales from every corner of
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“Society will not collapse that easily. You speak as Gaia, and Gaia cannot possibly understand the association of free individuals. Rules, established with reason and justice, can easily outlive their usefulness as circumstances change, yet can remain in force through inertia. It is then not only right, but useful, to break those rules as a way of advertising the fact that they have become useless—or even actually harmful.”
There is admittedly an element of disorder in free association, but that is the price one must pay for the ability to induce novelty and change.
He then said, “Do you always answer a question with a question?” Trevize couldn’t resist. “Why not?”
Lol
“You do not use my title, Minister, but you are emotionally moved, so that is perhaps forgivable.
Rekt
In a Galaxy of anarchy, how is it possible to sort out reasonable actions from unreasonable ones?
“We wouldn’t be popular anywhere. Where is the world whose people don’t prefer a comfortable, warm, and well-worn belief, however illogical, to the chilly winds of uncertainty? —Consider how you believe in the Seldon Plan without evidence.”
It is easy to argue that a society that depends totally on robots becomes soft and decadent, dwindling and dying out of sheer boredom or, more subtly, by losing the will to live.
Presumably, such is the folly of human beings, the prospects of intellectual suicide might not stop them from indulging their hatred, but the Foundation supports us. Therefore, we are constantly scolded and sneered at and denounced—and never touched.”
“Alone in space and far from all others, you would be unable to call on the help of your fellows, on their different talents and
knowledge. Alone, as an isolated individual, you would be sadly diminished as compared with yourself as part of an integrated society.
everything reminds you of a legend, and how illuminating they are sometimes. Human beings, in terraforming a world, leave out the thorns and thistles, whatever they may be, and human beings then have to labor to keep the world going. It isn’t a self-supporting organism as Gaia is. It is rather a miscellaneous collection of Isolates and the collection isn’t miscellaneous enough to allow the ecological balance to persist indefinitely. If humanity disappears, and if its guiding hands are removed, the world’s pattern of life inevitably begins to fall apart. The planet unterraforms itself.”
Bliss was no longer looking at Trevize. It was as though she were talking to herself. “He is an Isolate. He is not selfless because he is a part of a greater whole. He is selfless because he is selfless. Do you understand me? He has all to lose and nothing to gain, and yet he is
True character analysis all over here
We did not herd and flock like animals, as they did on Earth, as they did on other worlds, as they did even on the other Spacer worlds. We lived each alone, with robots to help us, viewing each other electronically as often as we wished, but coming within natural sight of one another only rarely. It is many years since I have gazed at human beings as I now gaze at you but, then,
“We Solarians did not. We foresaw inevitable failure in swarming. We moved underground and broke off all contact with the rest of the Galaxy. We were determined to remain ourselves at all costs. We developed suitable robots and weapons to protect our apparently empty surface, and they did the job admirably. Ships came and were destroyed, and stopped coming. The planet was considered deserted, and was forgotten, as we hoped it would be.
“Compel?” said Bander haughtily. “Let another do as it pleases, if it is but content that I do as I please. Please note that we do not use gendered pronouns in referring to each other.”
Since other Solarians exist, the limitation on freedom must be removed as far as possible by separating them all to the point where contact is virtually nonexistent.
must compete, and eventually must die. That may take tens of thousands of years, but we can wait. And when it happens, we Solarians, whole, solitary, liberated, will have the Galaxy to ourselves. We can then use, or not use, any world we wish to in addition to our own.”
“Just a robot?” A little passion entered her voice. “That’s the argument always. Just. Just! Why should the Solarian, Bander, have hesitated to kill us? We were just human beings without transducers. Why should there be any hesitation about leaving Fallom to its fate? It was just a Solarian, and an immature specimen at that. If you start dismissing anyone or anything you want to do away with as just a this or just a that, you can destroy anything you wish. There are always categories you can find for them.”
“Frankly,” said Trevize, “it’s annoying not to know the pronoun to use in connection with the creature. It impedes thought and conversation to hesitate forever at the pronoun.” “But that’s the fault of our language,” said Bliss, “and not of Fallom. No human language has been devised with hermaphroditism in mind. And I’m glad you brought it up, because I’ve been thinking about it myself. —Saying ‘it,’ as Bander itself insisted on doing, is no solution. That is a pronoun intended for objects to which sex is irrelevant, and there is no pronoun at all for objects that are sexually active in both
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“Do you suppose that moss stuff is what’s crumbling the rock?”
Grey goo?
Human beings are very conservative in some ways and virtually never change numerical conventions once they grow used to them. They even come to mistake them for laws of nature, I think.
know now where Earth must have transferred its secret.”
The moon?
as sensitive as my first, and has ten million times the capacity; but whereas my first brain endured for over ten thousand years, the present one is but six hundred years old and is unmistakably senescent. With every memory of twenty thousand years perfectly recorded and with a perfect recall mechanism in place, the brain is filled. There is a rapidly declining ability to reach decisions; an even more rapidly declining ability to test and influence minds at hyperspatial distances. Nor can I design a sixth brain. Further miniaturization will run against the blank wall of the uncertainty
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Big implications of computational complexity
And Trevize said, “The decision is for Galaxia. There is no further doubt in my mind on that point.”
Odd implications given that this book was written at the tail-end of the Cold War Era
That is the unstated axiom: that there is only one species of intelligence in the Galaxy and that it is Homo sapiens.
Good call.
