Robert J. Sawyer
Writer
1960-04-29
Quotes by Robert J. Sawyer
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¨Kayla replied, ´And we---or the p-zeds, at any rate---copy indiscriminately, without reflection. And if the person they´re coyping is a psychopath, then their behavior ends up being de facto psychopathic, too.´ ¨
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There is no indisputable proof for the big bang, said Hollus. And there is none for evolution. And yet you accept those. Why hold the question of whether there is a creator to a higher standard?
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That natural selection can produce changes within a type is disputed by no one, not even the staunchest creationist. But that it can transform one species into another — that, in fact, has never been observed.
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No one disputes that seeming order can come out of the application of simple rules. But who wrote the rules?
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It is either coincidence piled on top of coincidence, said Hollus, or it is deliberate design.
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That natural selection can produce changes within a type is disputed by no one, not even the staunchest creationist. But that it can transform one species into another — that, in fact, has never been observed.
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There is no indisputable proof for the big bang, said Hollus. And there is none for evolution. And yet you accept those. Why hold the question of whether there is a creator to a higher standard?
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¨Kayla replied, ´And we---or the p-zeds, at any rate---copy indiscriminately, without reflection. And if the person they´re coyping is a psychopath, then their behavior ends up being de facto psychopathic, too.´ ¨
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No one disputes that seeming order can come out of the application of simple rules. But who wrote the rules?
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It is either coincidence piled on top of coincidence, said Hollus, or it is deliberate design.
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Social progress is a big thing for me. Although science fiction is traditionally concerned with the hard sciences, which is chemistry, physics, and, some might argue, biology, my father was and still is a social scientist at the University of Toronto.
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Our job is not to predict the future. Rather, it's to suggest all the possible futures - so that society can make informed decisions about where we want to go.
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I'm a very skeptical guy: my willing suspension of disbelief doesn't go very far when I'm reading other people's SF, and it goes even less far when I'm writing my own.
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In addition to psychopaths, 'Quantum Night' is also a novel about literally thoughtless people, without inner voices, thoughts in their heads.
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Science fiction is about extrapolation, looking back through history, spotting a trend, and predicting where it will go.
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One of the things that science fiction gets to do is thought experiments about the human condition that would be impractical or unethical to conduct in real life.
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An agnostic is someone who believes the nature of the Divine is unknowable... and in that sense, I'm willing to subscribe to being an agnostic.
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Once we no longer have the intellectual upper hand, then we quite literally, by definition, cannot outwit our successors. So unless we are absolutely sure that the machines we are building right now are not going to eventually become our new robot overlords, prudence is called for.
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I'm often characterized as an optimistic writer, and certainly my 'Neanderthal Parallax' and 'WWW' trilogies shade toward the utopian. I like to think that's not simple naivete, but rather a reasonable approach.
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Science fiction has never been about the future; it's always been about the present day whether it's Victorian England that Wells was writing about or the post-9/11 era that I'm writing about.
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