#tedchiang
As he practiced his writing, Jijingi came to understand what Moseby had meant: writing was not just a way to record what someone said; it could help you decide what you would say before you said it. And words were not just the pieces of speaking; they were the pieces of thinking. And when you wrote them down, you could grasp your thoughts like bricks in your hands and push them into different arrangements. Writing let you look at your thoughts in a way you couldn’t if you were just talking, and having seen them, you could improve them, make them stronger and more elaborate. #writing #cognition #curation-and-selection #creativity #self-improvement #growth
But, I wondered, if everyone remembered everything, would our differences get shaved away? What would happen to your sense of self? It seemed to me that a perfect memory couldn’t be a narrative and more than unedited security-cam footage could be a feature film. #film #self #memory #narrative
We don’t normally think of it as such, but writing is a technology, which means that a literate person is someone whose processes are technologically mediated. We became cognitive cyborgs as soon as we became fluent readers, and the consequences of that were profound. #humans-and-machines #androids #technology #consequences
Anthropologists will tell you that oral cultures understand the past differently; for them, their histories don’t need to be accurate so much as they need to validate the community’s understanding of itself. So it wouldn’t be correct to say that their histories are unreliable; their histories do what they need to do. #anthropology
“Science is not just the search for truth,” he said. “It’s the search for purpose.” #science
“The question [is…] whether making good choices is worth doing. I think it absolutely is. None of us are saints, but we can all try to be better. Each time you do something generous, you’re shaping yourself into someone who’s more likely to be generous next time, and that matters.” #decision-making #choice #generosity
“Even if you were acting out of character, you have to take responsibility for your actions.” #intent