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It will certainly show what our ancestors would be thinking if they were alive today. People have often speculated about this. Would they approve of modern society, they ask, would they marvel at present-day achievements? And of course this misses a fundamental point. What our ancestors would really be thinking, if they were alive today, is: “Why is it so dark in here?”
A direct hit by a meteorite, for example, would count as gentrification.
When you die, the first thing you lose is your life. The next thing is your illusions.
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People needed to believe in gods, if only because it was so hard to believe in people.
Frank Privette liked this
stayed up all night designing aqueducts. You scrimped and saved to send them to the best schools, and then they went and paid you back by getting educated.
The fact is that camels are far more intelligent than dolphins.*
And Dil was realizing that there are few things that so shake belief as seeing, clearly and precisely, the object of that belief. Seeing, contrary to popular wisdom, isn’t believing. It’s where belief stops, because it isn’t needed anymore.
No one is more worried by the actual physical manifestation of a god than his priests; it’s like having the auditors in unexpectedly.
And philosophers didn’t listen to one another. And they don’t stick to the point. This probably is mocracy at work.
Ptraci didn’t just derail the train of thought, she ripped up the rails, burned the stations and melted the bridges for scrap.
It is now known to science that there are many more dimensions than the classical four. Scientists say that these don’t normally impinge on the world because the extra dimensions are very small and curve in on themselves, and that since reality is fractal most of it is tucked inside itself. This means either that the universe is more full of wonders than we can hope to understand or, more probably, that scientists make things up as they go along.
Everything that was magical was just a way of describing the world in words it couldn’t ignore.
