Neal Stephenson - Anathem (2008)

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Much pruning had taken place in recent weeks. I am now absent in many versions of the cosmos where you are present.

Neal Stephenson
If you sincerely believed in God, how could you form one thought, speak one sentence, without mentioning Him?

Neal Stephenson
"Describe worrying," he went on.
"What!?"
"Pretend I'm someone who has never worried. I'm mystified. It don't get it. Tell me how to worry."
"Well... I guess the first step is to envision a sequence of events as they might play out in the future."
"But I do that all the time. And yet I don't worry."
"It is a sequence of events with a bad end."
"So, you're worried that a pink dragon will fly over the concent and fart nerve gas on us?"

Neal Stephenson
When I saw any of those kinds of beauty I knew I was alive, and not just in the sense that when I hit my thumb with a hammer I knew I was alive, but rather in the sense that I was partaking of something—something was passing through me that it was in my nature to be a part of.

Neal Stephenson
But in that we started so many things in that moment, we brought to their ends many others that have been the subject matter of this account, and so here is where I draw a line across the leaf and call it the end.

Neal Stephenson
There's no way to get from the point in Hemn space where we are now, to one that includes pink nerve-gas-farting dragons, following any plausible action principle. Which is really just a technical term for there being a coherent story joining one moment to the next. If you simply throw action principles out the window, you're granting the world the freedom to wander anywhere in Hemn space, to any outcome, without constraint. It becomes pretty meaningless. The mind... knows that there is an action principle that governs how the world evolves from one moment to the next—that restricts our world's path to points that tell an internally consistent story. So it focuses its worrying on outcomes that are more plausible...

Neal Stephenson
Those who think through possible outcomes with discipline, forge connections, in so doing, to other cosmi in which those outcomes are more than mere possibilities. Such a consciousness is measurably, quantitatively different from one that has not undertaken the same work and so, yes, is able to make correct decisions in an Emergence where an untrained mind would be of little use.

Neal Stephenson
Do you need transportation? Tools? Stuff?
"Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs. We have a protractor."
Okay, I'll go home and see if I can scrounge up a ruler and a piece of string.
That'd be great.

Neal Stephenson
Technically, of course, he was right. Socially, he was annoying us.

Neal Stephenson
And it happened all the time that the compromise between two perfectly rational alternatives was something that made no sense at all.

Neal Stephenson
Give me an adventure. I'm not talking about some massive adventure. Just something that would make getting fired seem small. Something that I might remember when I'm old.
I can't predict the future, I said, but based on what little I know so far, I'm afraid it has to be a massive adventure or nothing.
Great!
Probably the kind of adventure that ends in a mass burial.

Neal Stephenson
"Quantum interference—the crosstalk among similar quantum states—knits the different versions of your brain together."
"You're saying that my consciousness extends across multiple cosmi," I said. "That's a pretty wild statement."
"I'm saying all things do," Orolo said. "That comes with the polycosmic interpretation. The only thing exceptional about the brain is that it has found a way to use this."

Neal Stephenson
IF YOU ARE ACCUSTOMED to reading works of speculative fiction and enjoy puzzling things out on your own, skip this Note. Otherwise, know that the scene in which this book is set is not Earth, but a planet called Arbre that is similar to Earth in many ways.

Neal Stephenson
They knew many things but had no idea why. And strangely this made them more, rather than less, certain that they were right.

Neal Stephenson
The expression can be traced to the Third Centennial Apert, when the gates of several Hundreder maths opened to reveal startling outcomes, e. g.: at Saunt Rambalf's, a mass suicide that had taken place only moments earlier. At Saunt Terramore's, nothing at all — not even human remains. At Saunt Byadin's, a previously unheard-of religious sect.... At Saunt Lesper's, no humans, but a previously undiscovered species of tree-dwelling higher primates.

Neal Stephenson
As far as culture and politics are concerned, the important theme is long-attention-span vs. short-attention-span thinking. I'm sure that your readers can think of any number of ways in which having a longer attention span can be useful. But I'll name one. Bankers with long attention spans don't lend money to people who can't pay it back. If we had more bankers who adopted a long-term view of their responsibilities, we might not be in the middle of a financial crisis that is blowing away 150-year-old investment banks.

Neal Stephenson
"I guess that people like to think they are not only living but propagating their way of life."
"That's right. People have a need to feel that they are part of some sustainable project. Something that will go on without them. It creates a feeling of stability. I believe that the need for that kind of stability is as basic and as desperate as some of the other, more obvious needs. But there's more than one way to get it."

Neal Stephenson
You should not believe a thing only because you like to believe it. We call that 'Diax's Rake'...

Neal Stephenson
Neither of us said a word as we picked our way down the path for the next quarter of an hour, and the sky receded to a deep violet. I had the illusion that, as it got darker, it moved away from us, expanding like a bubble, rushing away at a million light-years an hour, and as it whooshed past stars, we began to see them.

Neal Stephenson
That's funny because if anyone actually did prove the existence of God we'd just tell him 'nice proof, Fraa Bly' and start believing in God.

Neal Stephenson
"Ylma is having you work it out in the most gruesome way possible... so that when she teaches you how it's really done, it'll seem that much easier.... Like hitting yourself in the head with a hammer—it feels so good when you stop." This was the oldest joke in the world, but Barb hadn't heard it before, and he became so amused that he got physically excited and had to run back and forth across the kitchen several times to flame off energy. A few weeks ago, I would have been alarmed by this and would have tried to calm him down, but now I was used to it, and knew that if I approached him physically things would get much worse.

Neal Stephenson
I always tend to assume there's an infinite amount of money out there." There might as well be, "Arsibalt said, "but most of it gets spent on pornography, sugar water and bombs. There is only so much that can be scraped together for particle accelerators.

Neal Stephenson
He told us that a lone avout was being pursued by a mob. We saw it as an emergence.

Neal Stephenson
Tris was pudgy and not especially good looking, but she had the personality of a beautiful girl because she'd been raised in a math.

Neal Stephenson
Do your neighbors burn one another alive? was how Fraa Orolo began his conversation with Artisan Flec.
Do your shamans walk around on stilts? Fraa Orolo asked, reading from a leaf that, judging by its brownness, was at least five centuries old. Then he looked up and added helpfully, You might call them pastors or witch doctors.
When a child gets sick, do you pray? Sacrifice to a painted stick? Or blame it on an old lady?
Do you fancy you will see your dead dogs and cats in some sort of afterlife?

Neal Stephenson