The Hydrogen Sonata

Imported from: Clippings/Banks-The-Hydrogen-Sonata.md

Notes built from this: chaos-and-prediction

Author: Iain M. Banks Source: My Clippings.txt

Highlights

“Oh well, never mind. It would be far preferable if things were better, but they’re not, so let’s make the most of it. Let’s see what fresh fuckwittery the dolts can contrive to torment themselves with this time.” “Not necessarily the most compassionate response.”

Location 3361–3363 · 2023-07-31

---

The Chaos Problem meant that in certain situations you could run as many simulations as you liked, and each would produce a meaningful result, but taken as a whole there would be no discernible pattern to them, and so no lesson to be drawn or obvious course laid out to pursue; it would all depend so exquisitely on exactly how you had chosen to tweak the initial conditions at the start of each run that, taken together, they would add up to nothing more […]

Location 4379–4382 · 2023-07-31

“One should never mistake pattern for meaning.”

“If you wanted to feel you were still somehow in control of a ship or a fleet or even your civilization, talking amongst yourselves seemed to be the way you convinced yourself of it.”

“So basically you’re sticking around to watch us all screw up ?"
"Yes. It’s one of life’s few guaranteed constants.”

“Meaning is everywhere. There is always meaning. Or at least all things show a disturbing tendency to have meaning ascribed to them when intelligent creatures are present. It’s just that there’s no final Meaning, with a capital M. Though the illusion that there might be is comforting for a certain class of mind.”