EDIM 29 - Ender Excerpts
Books can be worth the time it takes to read them. And... yeah. Vocabulary building and all that.
In straight terms, I've done a mixture of different things this afternoon and absolutely nothing has crossed my mind to write. So instead I'm going to *gasp* copy and paste two of my favorite excerpts from the Ender series by Orson Card. I've yet to read the entire series, but the first three are terrific. I praise them so highly as to say they've helped me live with more with an open mind than any other book beside the bible. Incomparably more than my current reading of The God Delusion by Dawkins, which has largely disappointed as of yet, despite giving a better understanding of the atheistic worldview. Anyway, before I derail into uninformed rants.... it bears waiting till I actually complete the book before making any remark. Though whether I will upon finishing is in question. Note, I don't condone what follows as absolute truth by any means.... they are only extra interesting parts that stood out to me. The first is a scientists personal journal entry if I recall correctly, while the second is a discussion of humans from the perspective of two alien species. I thought it humorous, slightly surreal, and of course, interesting.
First excerpt from Speaker For The Dead: 2nd in series, I don't remember where this is from.
"You will discover, as I have, that is is no less painful to withhold knowledge from your fellow scientists. When you watch them struggle with a question, knowing that you have the information that could easily resolve their dilemma; when you see them come very near the truth and then for lack of your information retreat from their correct conclusions and return to error- you would not be human if it didn't cause you great anguish. You must remind yourselves, always: It is their law, their choice. They are the ones who built the wall between themselves and the truth, and they would punish us if we let them know how easily and thoroughly that wall has been breached. And for every framling scientist who is longing for truth, there are ten petty-minded descabeqados (headless ones) who despise knowledge, who never think of an original hypothesis, whose only labor is to prey on the writings of the true scientists in order to catch tiny errors or contradictions or lapses in method. These suckflies will pore over every report you make, and if you are careless even once they will catch you."
Second excerpt from Xenocide: 3rd in series, chapter 12 prelude.
"It's a wonder that human beings ever become intelligent enough to travel between worlds."
"Not really. I've been thinking about the lately. Starflight they learned from you. Ender says they didn't grasp the physics of it until your first colony fleet reached their star system."
"Should we have stayed home for fear of teaching starflight to softbodied four-limbed hairless slugs?"
"You spoke a moment ago as if you believed that human beings had actually achieved intelligence."
"Clearly they have."
"I think not. I think they have found a way to fake intelligence."
"Their starships fly. We haven't noticed any of yours racing the lightwaves through space."
"We're still young, as a species. But look at us. Look at you. We both have evolved a very similar system. We each have four kinds of life in our species. The young, who are helpless grubs. The mates, who never achieve intelligence- with you, it's your drones, and with us, it's the little mothers. Then there's the many, many individuals who have enough intelligence to perform manual tasks- our wives and brothers, your workers. And finally the intelligent ones- we fathertrees, and you, the Hive Queen. We are the repository of the wisdom of the race, because we have the time to think, to contemplate. Ideation is our primary activity."
"While the humans are all running around as brothers and wives. As workers."
"Not just workers. Their young go through a helpless grub stage, too, which lasts longer than some of them think. And when it's time to reproduce, they all turn into drones or little mothers, little machines that have only one goal in life: to have sex and die."
"They think they're rational through all those stages."
"Self-delusion. Even at their best, they never, as individuals, rise above the level of manual laborers. Who among them has the time to become intelligent?"
"Not one."
"They never know anything. They don't have enough years in their little lives to come to an understanding of anything at all. And yet they think they understand. From earliest childhood, they delude themselves into thinking they comprehend the world, while all that's really going on is that they've got some primitive assumption and prejudices. As they get older they learn more elevated vocabulary in which to express their mindless pseudo- knowledge and bully other people into accepting their prejudices as if they were truth, but it all amounts to the same thing. Individually, human beings are all dolts."
"While collectively..."
"Collectively, they're a collection of dolts. But in all their scurrying around and pretending to be wise, throwing out idiotic half-understood theories about this and that, one or two of them will come up with some idea that is just a little bit closer to the truth than what is already known. And in a sort of fumbling trial and error, about half the time the truth actually rises to the top and becomes accepted by people who still don't understand it, who simply adopt it as a new prejudice to be trusted blindly until the next dolt accidentally comes up with an improvement."
"So you're saying that no one is ever individually intelligent, and in groups are even stupider than individuals- and yet by keeping so many fools engaged in pretending to be intelligent, they still come up with some sort of the same results that an intelligent species would come up with."
"Exactly."
"If they're so stupid and we're so intelligent, why do we have only one hive, which thrives here because a human being carried us? And why have you been so utterly dependent on them for every technical and scientific advance you make?"
"Maybe intelligence isn't all it's cracked up to be."
"Maybe we're the fools, for thinking we know things. Maybe humans are the only ones who can deal with the fact that nothing can ever be known at all."
In straight terms, I've done a mixture of different things this afternoon and absolutely nothing has crossed my mind to write. So instead I'm going to *gasp* copy and paste two of my favorite excerpts from the Ender series by Orson Card. I've yet to read the entire series, but the first three are terrific. I praise them so highly as to say they've helped me live with more with an open mind than any other book beside the bible. Incomparably more than my current reading of The God Delusion by Dawkins, which has largely disappointed as of yet, despite giving a better understanding of the atheistic worldview. Anyway, before I derail into uninformed rants.... it bears waiting till I actually complete the book before making any remark. Though whether I will upon finishing is in question. Note, I don't condone what follows as absolute truth by any means.... they are only extra interesting parts that stood out to me. The first is a scientists personal journal entry if I recall correctly, while the second is a discussion of humans from the perspective of two alien species. I thought it humorous, slightly surreal, and of course, interesting.
First excerpt from Speaker For The Dead: 2nd in series, I don't remember where this is from.
"You will discover, as I have, that is is no less painful to withhold knowledge from your fellow scientists. When you watch them struggle with a question, knowing that you have the information that could easily resolve their dilemma; when you see them come very near the truth and then for lack of your information retreat from their correct conclusions and return to error- you would not be human if it didn't cause you great anguish. You must remind yourselves, always: It is their law, their choice. They are the ones who built the wall between themselves and the truth, and they would punish us if we let them know how easily and thoroughly that wall has been breached. And for every framling scientist who is longing for truth, there are ten petty-minded descabeqados (headless ones) who despise knowledge, who never think of an original hypothesis, whose only labor is to prey on the writings of the true scientists in order to catch tiny errors or contradictions or lapses in method. These suckflies will pore over every report you make, and if you are careless even once they will catch you."
Second excerpt from Xenocide: 3rd in series, chapter 12 prelude.
"It's a wonder that human beings ever become intelligent enough to travel between worlds."
"Not really. I've been thinking about the lately. Starflight they learned from you. Ender says they didn't grasp the physics of it until your first colony fleet reached their star system."
"Should we have stayed home for fear of teaching starflight to softbodied four-limbed hairless slugs?"
"You spoke a moment ago as if you believed that human beings had actually achieved intelligence."
"Clearly they have."
"I think not. I think they have found a way to fake intelligence."
"Their starships fly. We haven't noticed any of yours racing the lightwaves through space."
"We're still young, as a species. But look at us. Look at you. We both have evolved a very similar system. We each have four kinds of life in our species. The young, who are helpless grubs. The mates, who never achieve intelligence- with you, it's your drones, and with us, it's the little mothers. Then there's the many, many individuals who have enough intelligence to perform manual tasks- our wives and brothers, your workers. And finally the intelligent ones- we fathertrees, and you, the Hive Queen. We are the repository of the wisdom of the race, because we have the time to think, to contemplate. Ideation is our primary activity."
"While the humans are all running around as brothers and wives. As workers."
"Not just workers. Their young go through a helpless grub stage, too, which lasts longer than some of them think. And when it's time to reproduce, they all turn into drones or little mothers, little machines that have only one goal in life: to have sex and die."
"They think they're rational through all those stages."
"Self-delusion. Even at their best, they never, as individuals, rise above the level of manual laborers. Who among them has the time to become intelligent?"
"Not one."
"They never know anything. They don't have enough years in their little lives to come to an understanding of anything at all. And yet they think they understand. From earliest childhood, they delude themselves into thinking they comprehend the world, while all that's really going on is that they've got some primitive assumption and prejudices. As they get older they learn more elevated vocabulary in which to express their mindless pseudo- knowledge and bully other people into accepting their prejudices as if they were truth, but it all amounts to the same thing. Individually, human beings are all dolts."
"While collectively..."
"Collectively, they're a collection of dolts. But in all their scurrying around and pretending to be wise, throwing out idiotic half-understood theories about this and that, one or two of them will come up with some idea that is just a little bit closer to the truth than what is already known. And in a sort of fumbling trial and error, about half the time the truth actually rises to the top and becomes accepted by people who still don't understand it, who simply adopt it as a new prejudice to be trusted blindly until the next dolt accidentally comes up with an improvement."
"So you're saying that no one is ever individually intelligent, and in groups are even stupider than individuals- and yet by keeping so many fools engaged in pretending to be intelligent, they still come up with some sort of the same results that an intelligent species would come up with."
"Exactly."
"If they're so stupid and we're so intelligent, why do we have only one hive, which thrives here because a human being carried us? And why have you been so utterly dependent on them for every technical and scientific advance you make?"
"Maybe intelligence isn't all it's cracked up to be."
"Maybe we're the fools, for thinking we know things. Maybe humans are the only ones who can deal with the fact that nothing can ever be known at all."
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