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What I found interesting though was the temporal like experience presented from the pov of God. It doesn't seem like the God in the story is omnipotent.
I can't recommend this author enough. Project Hail Mary and The Martian are amazing works of science fiction. Project Hail Mary is actually amazing as an audiobook.
I can't recommend this author enough. Project Hail Mary and The Martian are amazing works of science fiction. Project Hail Mary is actually amazing as an audiobook.
Overall, his authorial voice reminds me a lot of YouTube hosts? Perhaps that's just the cultural moment we're in.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And it plays out over a trillion or so years. Horrifying. Horrifying to whom? The character isn't suffering. They aren't aware of the passage of those trillions of years. There's nothing any more horrifying about this than about bog-standard reincarnation. And so what if you're the only one? That's not really true in a functional sense. Every human you interact with is indeed a truly conscious individual with a dis…
> There's nothing any more horrifying about this than about bog-standard reincarnation. Reincarnation tends to assume at least some degree of continuity and free will. This thing assumes that you're eventually going to be, e.g., The Elephant Man, or that poor Japanese guy who got cooked by a megadose of radiation and the doctors wouldn't let him die. That, if there's a torture that you've heard of, or any cautionary…
> and without learning anything at all
Well, you learn something later, when the egg hatches. But blank-slate reincarnation also promises that you'll completely forget the trauma of being the elephant man, at least for the duration of the egg process. Surely the real burden would be remembering all those billions of lives with only your paltry human mind to bear it.
See also:
I can't recommend this author enough. Project Hail Mary and The Martian are amazing works of science fiction. Project Hail Mary is actually amazing as an audiobook.
Funny coincidence - I just finished the Project Hail Mary audiobook this morning and loved it. Any recommendations for the next audiobook?
Hah, it's literally Schopenhauer's hell: Humans as both the tormenting demons and as those doing the suffering. In this case, one human -- which further frames suffering as an inescapable, masochistic cycle. "You were victimizing yourself" says the demiurge. That everything is predetermined and that time is nonlinear is also something that should trouble every contemplative person. It's basically a devil's brew of ni…
That's German Romanticism which is the invisible 90% of the iceberg of the modern perception of religions, New Age ideas, and humanistic psychology.
Here's a summary of how the Romantic thought has distorted the Western understanding of Buddhist teachings. I highly recommend it because once you know its signs, you'll start spotting it presence everywhere, not just in Western Buddhism:
https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/PurityOfHeart/Section0009....
I've always liked the story but if I was presented with that revelation I'd be questioning to what extent these other me's are really me and how really everything else (genetics, environment) is shaping behaviour and I'm what? A vessel that gets all the memories at the end? >“Every time you victimized someone,” I said, “you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself. Every h…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Funny coincidence - I just finished the Project Hail Mary audiobook this morning and loved it. Any recommendations for the next audiobook?
Mickey7 is pretty good if you enjoyed Project Hail Mary. Alternatively, the Murderbot series.
Also there bobiverse series is great IMHO