Neal Stephenson Quote
Today I: smoke/am overweight/have a shitty attitude/am depressed because: my mom died of cancer/my uncle put his thumb up my butt/my dad hit me with a razor strop seems kind of overly deterministic to Randy; it seems to reflect a kind of lazy or half-witted surrender to bald teleology. Basically, if everyone has a vested interest in believing that they understand everything, or even that people are capable in principle of understanding it (either because believing this dampens their insecurities about the unpredictable world, or makes them feel more intelligent than others, or both) then you have an environment in which dopey, reductionist, simple-minded, pat, glib-thinking can circulate, like wheelbarrows filled with inflated currency in the marketplaces of Jakarta.
Today I: smoke/am overweight/have a shitty attitude/am depressed because: my mom died of cancer/my uncle put his thumb up my butt/my dad hit me with a razor strop seems kind of overly deterministic to Randy; it seems to reflect a kind of lazy or half-witted surrender to bald teleology. Basically, if everyone has a vested interest in believing that they understand everything, or even that people are capable in principle of understanding it (either because believing this dampens their insecurities about the unpredictable world, or makes them feel more intelligent than others, or both) then you have an environment in which dopey, reductionist, simple-minded, pat, glib-thinking can circulate, like wheelbarrows filled with inflated currency in the marketplaces of Jakarta.
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About Neal Stephenson
Stephenson's work explores mathematics, cryptography, linguistics, philosophy, currency, and the history of science. He also writes nonfiction articles about technology in publications such as Wired. He has written novels with his uncle, George Jewsbury ("J. Frederick George"), under the collective pseudonym Stephen Bury.
Stephenson has worked part-time as an advisor for Blue Origin, a company (founded by Jeff Bezos) developing a spacecraft and a space launch system, and also co-founded the Subutai Corporation, whose first offering is the interactive fiction project The Mongoliad. He was Magic Leap's Chief Futurist from 2014 to 2020.