“If you do things because you want someone else to pat you on the head, you won’t get as good at it as someone who does it for internal satisfaction.
Clipping
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books > Walkaway: A Novel (Cory Doctorow)
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books > Walkaway: A Novel (Cory Doctorow)
The idea that there wouldn’t be leaders in the race to build a leaderless society offended him in ways he wouldn’t let himself understand.
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books > Walkaway: A Novel (Cory Doctorow)
whole identity rests on the idea that the system is legit and that he earned his position into it fair and square and everyone else is a whiner.”
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books > If This Book Exists, You're in the Wrong Universe (John Dies at the End) (Pargin, Jason)
“That little kids’ game,” said Marconi, “was developed by neuroscientists who are experts on the addictive nature of dopamine release intervals. They believed they were simply boosting ‘engagement’ by making the software as addictive as possible to young minds. But gods and devils gain their strength by subsuming the will of followers, by the molding of human behavior to their own ends. This software manipulates will on an astonishing scale, locking in the user to performing mindless, repetitive tasks instead of living out their own purpose as human beings. Watch anyone on their smartphone and tell me their state of mind can be called anything other than a ‘trance.’” I said, “Are you sure you’re not just old and scared of technology?” “Never forget, David, that devils have soft hands. The most effective manipulation always comes with the illusion of choice; it feels less like a whip and more like quenching a thirst. What is the next step in the ritual?”
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books > If This Book Exists, You're in the Wrong Universe (John Dies at the End) (Pargin, Jason)
They wanted it to always be at the back of your mind, almost as if some forms of modern entertainment are really about creating a continuous sense of low-level anxiety.
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books > The Candy House: A Novel (Jennifer Egan)
The need for personal glory is like cigarette addiction: a habit that feels life-sustaining even as it kills you. Childish attention-seeking is usually satisfied at the expense of real power.
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books > Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow: A no (Gabrielle Zevin)
She had once read in a book about consciousness that over the years, the human brain makes an AI version of your loved ones. The brain collects data, and within your brain, you host a virtual version of that person. Upon the person’s death, your brain still believes the virtual person exists, because, in a sense, the person still does. After a while, though, the memory fades, and each year, you are left with an increasingly diminished version of the AI you had made when the person was alive.
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books > Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow: A no (Gabrielle Zevin)
“I loved being a student actor. I was fully devoted to it, and now I’m not. I think if I’d become a professional, I would likely have fallen out of love with it anyway. It isn’t a sadness, but a joy, that we don’t do the same things for the length of our lives.”
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books > Perhaps the Stars (Ada Palmer)
“That has been part of the problem.” Heloïse took up the thread. “We’ve concentrated all the warm, kind, nurturing impulses into one political body, leaving the other Hives, especially their leadership, dominated by …” What was that little hesitation, Heloïse? Did you almost say ‘the masculine’? “… those who tend to think first of advancing self and self-interest, or seeing things as zero sum, rather than advancing all interests by prioritizing the co-nurturing of everyone.”
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books > Perhaps the Stars (Ada Palmer)
Rare philosophy dwells in the stillness between choosing death and death, so rare I often feel I can’t express myself to those who have not known it—ever since I tasted it, I commune better with raw silence than with innocents.