Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom Quotes

“None of us are saints, but we can all try to be better. Each time you do something generous, you're shaping yourself into someone who's more likely to be generous next time, and that matters.”
― Ted Chiang, Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom

“We like the idea that there's always someone responsible for any given event, because it helps us make sense of the world. We like that so much that sometimes we blame ourselves, just so that there's someone to blame. But not everything is under our control, or even anyone's control.”
― Ted Chiang, Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom

“Every decision you make contributes to your character and shapes the kind of person you are.”
― Ted Chiang, Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom

“Because there are other people for whom being generous comes easily, without a struggle. And it’s easy for them because in the past they made a lot of little decisions to be generous. It was hard for me because I’ve made a lot of little decisions to be selfish in the past. So I’m the reason it’s hard for me to be generous.”
― Ted Chiang, Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom

“Edgar Allan Poe had used the phrase “the imp of the perverse” to describe the temptation to do the wrong thing simply because you could, and for many people the imp had become more persuasive.”
― Ted Chiang, Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom

“the question was, given that we know about other branches, whether making good choices is worth doing. I think it absolutely is. None of us are saints, but we can all try to be better. Each time you do something generous, you’re shaping yourself into someone who’s more likely to be generous next time, and that matters. “And it’s not just your behavior in this branch that you’re changing: you’re inoculating all the versions of you that split off in the future. By becoming a better person, you’re ensuring that more and more of the branches that split off from this point forward are populated by better versions of you.” Better versions of Nat. “Thanks,” she said. “That’s what I was looking for.”
― Ted Chiang, Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom

“We like the idea that there's always someone responsible for any given event, because that helps us make sense of the world. We like that so much that sometimes we blame ourselves, just so that there's someone to blame. But not everything is under our control, or even anyone's control.”
― Ted Chiang, Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom

“Each time you do something generous, you’re shaping yourself into someone who’s more likely to be generous next time, and that matters.”
― Ted Chiang, Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom

“Silitonga had shown that the smallest change imaginable would eventually have global repercussions. For a hypothetical time traveler who wanted to prevent Hitler’s rise to power, the minimal intervention wasn’t smothering the baby Adolf in his crib; all that was needed was to travel back to a month before his conception and disturb an oxygen molecule. Not only would this replace Adolf with a sibling, it would replace everyone his age or younger. By 1920 that would have composed half of the world’s population.”
― Ted Chiang, Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom

“I just looked out for myself, and I never really thought much about it.
"But recently, I had this ... this opportunity to do something actually nice for another person. It wasn't anyone I had wronged, just someone who was hurting. It would have been easy for me to behave the way I always have. But I imagined what a better person might do, and I did that instead.
"I feel good about what I did, but it's not like I deserve a medal or anything. Because there are other people for whom being generous comes easily, without a struggle. And it's easy for them because in the past they made a lot of little decisions to be generous. It was hard for me because I've made a lot of little decisions to be selfish in the past. So I'm the reason it's hard for me to be generous. That's something I need to fix. Or that I want to fix.”
― Ted Chiang, Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom

“I’m not sure about the math,” said Dana. “But I definitely think that your choices matter. Every decision you make contributes to your character and shapes the kind of person you are. If you want to be someone who always gives the extra money back to the cashier, the actions you take now affect whether you’ll become that person. “The branch where you’re having a bad day and keep the extra change is one that split off in the past; your actions can’t affect it anymore. But if you act compassionately in this branch, that’s still meaningful, because it has an effect on the branches that will split off in the future. The more often you make compassionate choices, the less likely it is that you’ll make selfish choices in the future, even in the branches where you’re having a bad day.” “That sounds good, but—” Nat thought about how years of acting a certain way could wear ruts in a person’s brain, so that you would keep slipping into the same habits without trying to. “But it’s not easy,” said Nat. “I know it’s not,” said Dana. “But the question was, given that we know about other branches, whether making good choices is worth doing. I think it absolutely”
― Ted Chiang, Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom

“But there was a shift in behavior that, while falling short of a mass outbreak of criminality, was readily discernible by social scientists. Edgar Allan Poe had used the phrase “the imp of the perverse” to describe the temptation to do the wrong thing simply because you could, and for many people the imp had become more persuasive.”
― Ted Chiang, Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom

“In discussions about free will, a lot of people say that for an action of yours to be freely chosen—for you to bear moral responsibility for that action—you must have had the ability to do something else under exactly the same circumstances.”
― Ted Chiang, Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom

“We like the idea that there’s always someone responsible for any given event, because that helps us make sense of the world. We like that so much that sometimes we blame ourselves, just so that there’s someone to blame. But not everything is under our control, or even anyone’s control.”
― Ted Chiang, Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom

“-No tengo claro el cálculo -dijo Dana- pero la verdad es que creo que las decisiones cuentan. Cada decisión que tomamos contribuye a nuestro carácter y conforma la clase de persona que somos. Si queremos ser alguien que devuelve el dinero de más a la cajera, las acciones que llevemos a cabo ahora, afectan la probabilidad de llegar o no a ser esa persona.

-Nat pensó en cómo un montón de años actuando de cierta forma podía dejar marcas en el cerebro de una persona, de manera que uno cayese una y otra vez en los mismos errores sin quererlo-

Pero la cuestión era, teniendo en cuenta que sabemos de la existencia de otras ramas, si vale la pena tomar buenas decisiones. Yo creo que sí, sin duda. No somos santos, pero podemos esforzarnos. Cada vez que hacemos algo generoso le damos forma a un yo más susceptible de hacerlo de nuevo la próxima vez, y eso cuenta".

Exhalación”
― Ted Chiang, Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom

“When a prism was activated, a quantum measurement was performed inside the device, with two possible outcomes of equal probability:”
― Ted Chiang, Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom

“In discussions about free will, a lot of people say that for an action of yours to be freely chosen - for you to bear moral responsibility for that action - you must have had the ability to do something else under exactly the same circumstances.”
― Ted Chiang, Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom

“Few acted so rashly as to commit murder or other felonies; the consequences of your actions still fell on you in this branch, not any other. But there was a shift in behavior that, while falling short of a mass outbreak of criminality, was readily discernible by social scientists. Edgar Allan Poe had used the phrase “the imp of the perverse” to describe the temptation to do the wrong thing simply because you could, and for many people the imp had become more persuasive.”
― Ted Chiang, Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom

“Experts tried to explain that human decision-making was a classical rather than quantum phenomenon, so the act of making a choice didn’t by itself cause new branches to split; it was quantum phenomena that generated new branches, and your choices in those branches were as meaningful as they ever were. Despite such efforts, many people became convinced that prisms nullified the moral weight of their actions.”
― Ted Chiang, Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom

“We've all made mistakes," she said. "Believe me, I've made my share. But there's a difference between accepting responsibility for our actions and taking the blame for random misfortunes.”
― Ted Chiang, Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom

“Dana nodded. “We like the idea that there’s always someone responsible for any given event, because that helps us make sense of the world.”
― Ted Chiang, Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom

“Branches are generated by any quantum event, right? Even before we had prisms, branches were still splitting off constantly; we just didn’t have access to any of them. If it were true that there’s always a branch where you pick up a gun and shoot someone on a whim, then we should have seen the same number of random murders every day before the prism was invented as we saw every day after. The invention of prisms wouldn’t cause more of those murders to line up in this particular branch. So if we’re seeing more people killing one another since prisms became popular, it can’t be because there’s always a branch where you pick up a gun.” “I follow your reasoning,” said Zareenah, “but then what’s causing the rise in murders?” Kevin shrugged. “It’s like a suicide fad. People hear about other people doing it, and it gives them ideas.” Nat thought about it. “That proves that the argument can’t be right, but it doesn’t explain why it’s wrong.”
― Ted Chiang, Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom

“If we say that an individual's character is revealed by the choices they make over time, then, in a similar fashion, an individual's character would also be revealed by the choices they make across many worlds.”
― Ted Chiang, Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom