Ra Quotes

“Ra's locks had been changed, making it effectively impossible to reprogram remotely. But an ancient piece of knowledge from the very dawn of computing remained true even of computers the size of stars: once you have physical access to the hardware, it's over.”
― qntm, Ra

“Quarry tried to hurdle her," Doug says. "Amazing show. Very daring. Didn't make it." They both hear Hela's distant, triumphant cry.”
― qntm, Ra

“It's not science anymore. It's below science, it's bottom-feeding, exploiting emergent behaviour from a totally artificial system”
― qntm, Ra

“She acknowledged all of those pressures and allowed them to pass through her. She worked dispassionately and efficiently. She has now finished, with five solid minutes' grace time. What does that remind her of?”
― qntm, Ra

“But an ancient piece of knowledge from the very dawn of computing remained true even of computers the size of stars: once you have physical access to the hardware, it's over.”
― qntm, Ra

“This is a war fought predominantly using highly precise simulacra of potential future events, simulacra so similar to reality that individuals inside them are, of necessity, unable to tell the difference between them and real events. That's the most insane thing about this situation. That's the fact that everybody involved in the war has to accept up front, or else be stored until the end of it. That, in large part, is why the Actual/Virtual schism happened. "This war, which we are fighting today, isn't necessarily the war. Every strategy and outcome is explored, tens to tens of trillions of times. By them and, when possible, by us. We are engaged in every single conceivable war against every conceivable enemy simultaneously. We must win all of them. We must accept all of them as real. "We can never know if we truly won. Or even if there truly is a war which needs to be won. We could be reasonless fabrications. Nevertheless, this is real. And we must win." Natalie stares. The sensation of familiarity is like a bell tolling. It's been tolling for some time, each toll louder and closer, and now she can't ignore it. Always assume reality. Those are my words.”
― qntm, Ra

“I'm an engineer. You're the client. You give me requirements. I actualise.”
― qntm, Ra

“Yes, Alan Minter is a little bit boring. (Because that's what you want in your new all-magical avionics systems: unpredictability.)”
― qntm, Ra

“He manages these people well, by being fundamentally incapable of perceiving or putting up with nonsense.”
― qntm, Ra

“It's not part of her psychosis, it's a routine component of her mundane life, like regular dreams and hair care and scrubbing the toilet.”
― qntm, Ra

“The following morning, Laura lunges for her alarm clock and silences it before it's had time to more than peep. Nick is lying on his side beside her, facing away from her. She stares at the back of his head for a minute, making sure he's undisturbed. She watches his shoulder rise and fall and runs calculations while trying to avoid being lulled back to sleep herself. Then, staying completely still otherwise, she reaches out with one hand”
― qntm, Ra

“I don't have any evidence yet," says Natalie. "I have data. Until data supports a conclusion it isn't evidence, it's just data. And I don't have enough data.”
― qntm, Ra

“He's brand new at it, only a month into the job and still full of momentum. It's the first job he's had which uses any meaningful fraction of his energy each day. It's the first time he's ever gone to bed tired without serious exercise. It also means that he gets home earlier than most.”
― qntm, Ra

“Meditation is mental exercise: heavily structured, exhausting, time-consuming, headache-inducing even under perfect circumstances and one hundred percent necessary.”
― qntm, Ra

“Two things, I have realised. One, that the future isn't something that happens just by sitting still watching digits roll over. The future's something you make a conscious decision to build. Two, what you build, you can sell.”
― qntm, Ra

“In his spare time, he pursues falconry. Raptors aren't dogs. Having found himself with the time and stability, Doug Ferno threw himself into something requiring a sustained effort across years plural to get a positive result. Raptors are stunningly well-adapted for their evolutionary niche, all talons and laser eyesight and two-hundred-mile-per-hour dives, but none of that makes them smart or friendly or obedient. Hela, his Harris Hawk, is a wild, paranoid animal. She accepts humans into her life only to the extent that they appear to be part of her successful hunting strategy. Even having been essentially raised by Doug Ferno, Hela treats him like the terrifyingly smart and dangerous apex predator he is, the same way that a man would treat a tiger who mysteriously began cooking meals for him. The instructions Hela understands extend as far as "fly into that tree over there", "fly back here to my hand" and "LOOK LOOK A RABBIT GET IT!". Today Hela perches on a thick leather glove on his left hand, with thin leather jesses tied around her legs and the other ends held tightly in his fist. Hela is a uniform dark brown, with yellow hooked beak and a one-metre wingspan. Her feathers are delicate and brittle, like glass. She weighs about a kilogram, almost little enough to forget about.”
― qntm, Ra

“How good are your simulations? What kind of fidelity? Was I a component? Could you be?" Grey delivers all four questions in about three seconds. There's a pause. The boy doesn't lower his hand, but Grey's got his attention. "How would the simulation begin?" Grey continues. "If you were simulating this course of action, how would it begin? It would begin with the decision being made, right?" A longer pause. Grey says, "It would begin exactly like this. No matter the option, no matter the outcome. The course of action to be tested is X. So they create a simulation in which the course of action selected was X. In the simulation, you are given the order. In the simulation, a simulation of you carries X out. And as it plays out, the simulators observe the results. They collect the results from X and Y and Z and stack them all together. And then pick the best one and they go out into reality and do it once, for real. "Think about it. You, you, know all of the possible outcomes if nobody does anything, if nobody interferes," Grey says. "Because those runs were run. But you don't know what the other options of interference are. You don't know about the other hypotheses. About Y and Z and the rest. That's the only way that you could prove that this isn't a hypothetical, because that information is the only information that's guaranteed not to be available inside a hypothetical. And you don't have it. And this can't be the right solution because it doesn't make sense. Killing to prevent more killing? Killing to prevent a medical revolution that could save literally every life? This has to be one of the faulty hypotheses. And that means that you and I don't exist. This isn't happening. So it doesn't matter if you don't kill me.”
― qntm, Ra

“The truth will inevitably be somewhere in the middle of all of these possibilities, but I'm sure you understand the common theme. Death surrounds this machine, like a curse. Death and leverage. The mother of all MacGuffins.”
― qntm, Ra

“We would need to get it to a laboratory," he says. "Because one isn't enough. If we put the thing at the most accessible point on Earth and formed a human processing system ten times as complicated as Mecca, and forced people through the machine one at a time, one every two seconds, for the rest of time, it wouldn't be enough. It wouldn't register statistically. It wouldn't make a dent in any of the rates. Which means we need to make more. Millions more. This is... it's Outside Context Medicine." "And then what would happen?" Grey stares into a distant possible future. "Medicine as we know it would— it would become magic. Everything we know about medicine would be revolutionised. We'd write libraries about what the machine does to people, the difference between broken and fixed people. And then we would throw away those libraries because we'd never need them again because everybody would live to a hundred and twenty without trying. If you lived inside a machine you could live for eternity. And if there's a way that the machine can reverse telomere shortening, then everybody on Earth could live forever just with periodic visits. You could have eternal youth. For everybody." "And then what?" "And then?" Grey concentrates. "There would— there would be no Malthusian catastrophe. There wouldn't need to be. Because you don't need food and water anymore. You visit the machine. Malnourished? Visit the machine. You come out the other side fed and watered. Food becomes a luxury item. The capacity of the planet becomes a function of physical space. Maybe if the technology can be adapted, the whole of the world could be pervaded with this restorative power. You wouldn't need to eat, or drink. Or even breathe. You wouldn't need air anymore. You'd— You'd have to rediscover death.”
― qntm, Ra

“It can't exist. It's beyond inexplicable. It represents a discontinuity in Grey's rational universe, a false statement which, thanks to the principle of explosion, logically implies the destruction of all reasoned thought. All statements are now false and true.”
― qntm, Ra

“Interesting" is the term geologists use to describe Iceland, and geologically interesting places are worth paying attention to in the same way that warzones and brand new nuclear powers are. Entire cubic kilometres of lava are seen emerging from the place. Sometimes it grows new islands. Sometimes its volcanic fissures eject so much sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere that the global temperature drops significantly, crops fail across the Northern Hemisphere and millions die from famine. Iceland is the place you go to remind yourself that planet Earth is a machine: very large, continuously operating, working on a time scale too long to easily observe, towards a highly uncertain end; and to remind yourself that all the organic life that has ever existed amounts to a greasy film that has survived on the exterior of that machine thanks to furious improvisation rather than any specific dispensation.”
― qntm, Ra

“And that's exactly how it goes. Surprise witnesses don't appear. Unexpected damning evidence isn't introduced. All hope isn't lost right at a critical dark point two-thirds of the way through the trial and victory isn't triumphantly clawed back in the middle of act three. It's lengthy and gruesome and tedious and involved and expensive and unpleasantly detailed and at times it seems like it's never going to end. But she wins. She straight-up wins. She wafts out of the court, as light as a feather.”
― qntm, Ra

“Diane is snarky and insufferable when not handled with the greatest of tranquility, and adorable and sweet when she wants something.”
― qntm, Ra

“Agriculture was an industry thousands of years before humans understood photosynthesis. A thing doesn't have to be understood before it can be useful. And using a thing is the best way to understand it. And if nobody will take a scientific paper seriously, we can demonstrate result after result until they take us seriously. We can make the world better until they take us seriously. Do you have the slightest idea how big this is?”
― qntm, Ra

“don't care how right you think you are. I don't even care how right I think you are! I want to see a LATEX-typeset paper from you. You need to show your working, because there are demons at work in your working.”
― qntm, Ra

“Natalie is Laura's twin sister. They are very nearly identical. Or, to put it another way, they are not identical.”
― qntm, Ra