I Just Can't...


Michael Stuart Kelly

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I just happened upon a quote by sci-fi author Ursula K. Le Guin that may shed some light on the fiction/fantasy vs. reality dilemma on the previous posts:

“As you read a book word by word and page by page, you participate in its creation, just as a cellist playing a Bach suite participates, note by note, in the creation, the coming-to-be, the existence, of the music. And, as you read and re-read, the book of course participates in the creation of you, your thoughts and feelings, the size and temper of your soul.”

― Ursula K. Le Guin

While written in the manner of seemingly mystical tones, there's something there to it that relates to the trinity of "sensations-percepts-concepts" that Rand used, and the dual-neuron theory, and how it relates to the idea that computers can't create in the sense that humans can. (Does a computer  "participate in its creation, just as a cellist playing a Bach suite participates, note by note, in the creation, the coming-to-be, the existence, of the music?")

And Le Guin's "poetic" manner of expressing this is kinda the point, isn't it? It's more "storytelling" than just describing it in dry, scientific tones, something Rand even pointed out in her reasoning for preferring fiction to non-fiction writing.

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