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What if science had always been wrong?
Et si la science avait toujours fait fausse route ?
Johnny Depp in Tim Burton's movie "Sleepy Hollow" (1999) / © Mandalay Pictures - American Zoetrope
Here, an archaeologist is looking for the “primordial human”, directly created by God. Further on, an anatomy researcher self-dissects his brain to observe how memories are etched into gold leaf. Whether he unfolds creationist reasoning or imagines a world governed by quantum physics in which we simultaneously make several life choices, American author Ted Chiang treats us with Expiration (Denoël, 2020), a collection of original short stories , strippers, twisted and (almost) funny.
It is worth remembering that what makes us human beings is first of all the fact that we consume two lungs filled with air every day. And every night we take out empty lungs to replace them with full lungs. A simple gesture, routine, but which avoids us death. We can possibly stop in equipped stations, to fill the empty lungs thanks to the pumps connected to the immense sheets of air which are under the ground; in fact, these stations are convivial places, dedicated to social links, believes the anatomy researcher who decided to investigate the human body, and in particular the brain ...
This researcher is troubled by the fact that clocks seem to have recently sped up. The answer may lie in our brains, which are the subject of multiple quirks. He does not believe in the thesis of the " inscriptionists ", who think that memories - and memory - are inscribed on gold leaves present in the skull. So he embarks on a self-dissection to get to the bottom of it ...
"The atmospheric pressure at the bottom of our universe was indeed increasing, thereby slowing down our thoughts"
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We will not reveal the results of his research, but we can all the same mention here one of his precious discoveries: " The atmospheric pressure at the bottom of our universe was indeed increasing, thereby slowing down. our thoughts ”.
The first source of jubilation, reading the news of the collection Expiration (Denoël, 2020) by Ted Chiang, is this unwavering assurance of researchers and scientists who often act as the main characters - that is to say, individuals considered to be "enlightened" in the universe in which they live and work - which conduct biased reasoning, according to approximate and / or archaic scientific knowledge, but formulated and expressed in a perfectly refined and elaborate language. It's funny and gratifying as well as disturbing.
Ted Chiang plays on the register of uchronia , imagining "modern" societies in which scientific knowledge would have developed a little no matter what, while these universes have many similarities with ours, which completely confuses the reader. , then caught up in arguments and thoughts that would be seriously conspiratorial if they were not fictional.
In search of "the primordial man"
Of course, human culture here is different from what we know: an archaeologist from Chicagou, who does excavations in Arisona, is astonished at the multiplicity of languages in the world. This is probably due to an "accidental" fact, and not intentional, she believes. She raves in front of these navelless mummies, proof that God has invented almost everything, and dreams of finding the original plans for the human species in its first form. Obsessed with purity and genesis, she developed a form of denial about the infinity of the universe.
caption
In the short story "The Life Cycle of Software Objects " Ana Alvarados is also a scientist. She worked in a zoo that closed. So she accepts a position in a firm that develops virtual games - in a world where people's daily lives are made up of games and virtual sets, where we meet others only by sending our avatar to meet that of the other. Having become a " virtual pet trainer ", she raises and develops the personality of " digimos ", kinds of talking chimpanzees, pets designed to be " fun and useful. ". She teaches them to identify forms and to speak without saying profanity… Until the day when the digimos want to have a sexuality and obtain the legal status of "legal person". So they gradually cease to obey and escape their creators.
In search of "the primordial man"
Of course, human culture here is different from what we know: an archaeologist from Chicagou, who does excavations in Arisona, is astonished at the multiplicity of languages in the world. This is probably due to an "accidental" fact, and not intentional, she believes. She raves in front of these navelless mummies, proof that God has invented almost everything, and dreams of finding the original plans for the human species in its first form. Obsessed with purity and genesis, she developed a form of denial about the infinity of the universe.
caption
In the short story "The Life Cycle of Software Objects " Ana Alvarados is also a scientist. She worked in a zoo that closed. So she accepts a position in a firm that develops virtual games - in a world where people's daily lives are made up of games and virtual sets, where we meet others only by sending our avatar to meet that of the other. Having become a " virtual pet trainer ", she raises and develops the personality of " digimos ", kinds of talking chimpanzees, pets designed to be " fun and useful. ". She teaches them to identify forms and to speak without saying profanity… Until the day when the digimos want to have a sexuality and obtain the legal status of "legal person". So they gradually cease to obey and escape their creators.
The author evokes the invention of an automatic nurse, or even of a "prism", a machine which would allow us to know the other fate of our other person.
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Where does emancipation begin? This is what Ted Chiang seems to be wondering with this collection of short stories, which are often "demonstrative", resembling illustrations of smoky theories. We had sworn that this narrative process would be crippling, and yet we let ourselves be taken by the unexpected charm of these stories where we rarely see the setting and the horizon, with characters with poor psychology, but that imported…
The author also evokes the invention of an automatic nurse, or of a "prism", a machine which would make it possible to know the other fate of our other person (our " parallel "), the one who, at the same time, would have made another choice and would find himself in another place and in another life - where one thinks, of course, of Schrödinger's cat .
Ted Chiang has a fascinating reflection on our relationship with machines: how, instead of replacing us for certain tasks, they modify our behavior, shaping in the process a new human personality. The automatic nurse, for example, teaches grammar effectively, escaping the emotions and torments of the human soul: " A rational education will produce rational children ".
In fact, we subtract these from the human condition and what it entails, in terms of responsibilities and ethics. With the process " Memori ” process - a camera that we can operate to film every moment of our life - which becomes a kind of prosthesis replacing our natural memory, the slightest conflict is resolved by the sudden display of the scene on the screen. origin of an argument between a father and his daughter, which proves that the daughter was right… Obviously, we are thinking here of “Back to image”, third and last episode of the first season of Black Mirror (one of the most successful of the whole series). Or a reflection on "selective amnesia" and the fact that without forgetting, human relations would only be more complicated.
How to invent an extraterrestrial culture?
A genius of symbolism, Ted Chiang plays as much on uchronia as on a wildly fanciful imagination, pushing the distorted reasoning of pseudo-scientists to their limits. It's funny, in a tongue-in-cheek fashion, right down to the supposedly serious notes he offers as an afterword to tell where his new ideas came from: “ Obviously, it's important to get rights for AIs, but it's also critical that people put real effort into their personal relationships with AIs ”.
The greatest gift anyone can give is a primordial deer femur
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In the end, it is a true poetry, graceful and whimsical, which emerges from these rantings, which attest that the most beautiful gift that one can offer is a primordial deer's femur - that is to say of a deer that was never a child but created thus, in adulthood, by God himself - and that the only thing one can fear is to one day be surrounded by still air, while researchers work to create and invent an alien culture from scratch ...
This news is proving to be invigorating enough to encourage us to reflect on what constitutes our learning, to analyze and question our beliefs, those that would push us to bend reality to our desires, whether it concerns our daily and intimate life, the way to raise children or to build a couple, until the choice of a profession. With this message, possibly serious: " Pretend to have free will " ...
Ted Chiang finally invites us to more humility, offering us some beautiful moments of optimism, for example in this form: " Our universe has perhaps slipped towards balance by emitting nothing but a breath. silent ”.
Bookmark What if science had always been wrong?
Et si la science avait toujours fait fausse route ? Johnny Depp in Tim Burton's movie "Sleepy Hollow" (1999) / © Mandalay Pictures - American Zoetrope Here, an archaeologist is looking for the “primordial human”, directly created by God. Further on, an anatomy researcher self-dissects his brain to observe how memories are etched into gold leaf. Whether he unfolds creationist reasoning or imagines a world governed by quantum physics in which we simultaneously make several life choices, American author Ted Chiang treats us with Expiration (Denoël, 2020), a collection of original short stories , strippers, twisted and (almost) funny.
It is worth remembering that what makes us human beings is first of all the fact that we consume two lungs filled with air every day. And every night we take out empty lungs to replace them with full lungs. A simple gesture, routine, but which avoids us death. We can possibly stop in equipped stations, to fill the empty lungs thanks to the pumps connected to the immense sheets of air which are under the ground; in fact, these stations are convivial places, dedicated to social links, believes the anatomy researcher who decided to investigate the human body, and in particular the brain ...
This researcher is troubled by the fact that clocks seem to have recently sped up. The answer may lie in our brains, which are the subject of multiple quirks. He does not believe in the thesis of the " inscriptionists ", who think that memories - and memory - are inscribed on gold leaves present in the skull. So he embarks on a self-dissection to get to the bottom of it ...
"The atmospheric pressure at the bottom of our universe was indeed increasing, thereby slowing down our thoughts" Share on twitter Share on Facebook We will not reveal the results of his research, but we can all the same mention here one of his precious discoveries: " The atmospheric pressure at the bottom of our universe was indeed increasing, thereby slowing down. our thoughts ”.
The first source of jubilation, reading the news of the collection Expiration (Denoël, 2020) by Ted Chiang, is this unwavering assurance of researchers and scientists who often act as the main characters - that is to say, individuals considered to be "enlightened" in the universe in which they live and work - which conduct biased reasoning, according to approximate and / or archaic scientific knowledge, but formulated and expressed in a perfectly refined and elaborate language. It's funny and gratifying as well as disturbing.
Ted Chiang plays on the register of uchronia , imagining "modern" societies in which scientific knowledge would have developed a little no matter what, while these universes have many similarities with ours, which completely confuses the reader. , then caught up in arguments and thoughts that would be seriously conspiratorial if they were not fictional.
In search of "the primordial man" Of course, human culture here is different from what we know: an archaeologist from Chicagou, who does excavations in Arisona, is astonished at the multiplicity of languages in the world. This is probably due to an "accidental" fact, and not intentional, she believes. She raves in front of these navelless mummies, proof that God has invented almost everything, and dreams of finding the original plans for the human species in its first form. Obsessed with purity and genesis, she developed a form of denial about the infinity of the universe.
caption In the short story "The Life Cycle of Software Objects " Ana Alvarados is also a scientist. She worked in a zoo that closed. So she accepts a position in a firm that develops virtual games - in a world where people's daily lives are made up of games and virtual sets, where we meet others only by sending our avatar to meet that of the other. Having become a " virtual pet trainer ", she raises and develops the personality of " digimos ", kinds of talking chimpanzees, pets designed to be " fun and useful. ". She teaches them to identify forms and to speak without saying profanity… Until the day when the digimos want to have a sexuality and obtain the legal status of "legal person". So they gradually cease to obey and escape their creators.
In search of "the primordial man" Of course, human culture here is different from what we know: an archaeologist from Chicagou, who does excavations in Arisona, is astonished at the multiplicity of languages in the world. This is probably due to an "accidental" fact, and not intentional, she believes. She raves in front of these navelless mummies, proof that God has invented almost everything, and dreams of finding the original plans for the human species in its first form. Obsessed with purity and genesis, she developed a form of denial about the infinity of the universe.
caption In the short story "The Life Cycle of Software Objects " Ana Alvarados is also a scientist. She worked in a zoo that closed. So she accepts a position in a firm that develops virtual games - in a world where people's daily lives are made up of games and virtual sets, where we meet others only by sending our avatar to meet that of the other. Having become a " virtual pet trainer ", she raises and develops the personality of " digimos ", kinds of talking chimpanzees, pets designed to be " fun and useful. ". She teaches them to identify forms and to speak without saying profanity… Until the day when the digimos want to have a sexuality and obtain the legal status of "legal person". So they gradually cease to obey and escape their creators.
The author evokes the invention of an automatic nurse, or even of a "prism", a machine which would allow us to know the other fate of our other person. Share on twitter Share on Facebook Where does emancipation begin? This is what Ted Chiang seems to be wondering with this collection of short stories, which are often "demonstrative", resembling illustrations of smoky theories. We had sworn that this narrative process would be crippling, and yet we let ourselves be taken by the unexpected charm of these stories where we rarely see the setting and the horizon, with characters with poor psychology, but that imported…
The author also evokes the invention of an automatic nurse, or of a "prism", a machine which would make it possible to know the other fate of our other person (our " parallel "), the one who, at the same time, would have made another choice and would find himself in another place and in another life - where one thinks, of course, of Schrödinger's cat .
Ted Chiang has a fascinating reflection on our relationship with machines: how, instead of replacing us for certain tasks, they modify our behavior, shaping in the process a new human personality. The automatic nurse, for example, teaches grammar effectively, escaping the emotions and torments of the human soul: " A rational education will produce rational children ".
In fact, we subtract these from the human condition and what it entails, in terms of responsibilities and ethics. With the process " Memori ” process - a camera that we can operate to film every moment of our life - which becomes a kind of prosthesis replacing our natural memory, the slightest conflict is resolved by the sudden display of the scene on the screen. origin of an argument between a father and his daughter, which proves that the daughter was right… Obviously, we are thinking here of “Back to image”, third and last episode of the first season of Black Mirror (one of the most successful of the whole series). Or a reflection on "selective amnesia" and the fact that without forgetting, human relations would only be more complicated.
How to invent an extraterrestrial culture? A genius of symbolism, Ted Chiang plays as much on uchronia as on a wildly fanciful imagination, pushing the distorted reasoning of pseudo-scientists to their limits. It's funny, in a tongue-in-cheek fashion, right down to the supposedly serious notes he offers as an afterword to tell where his new ideas came from: “ Obviously, it's important to get rights for AIs, but it's also critical that people put real effort into their personal relationships with AIs ”.
The greatest gift anyone can give is a primordial deer femur Share on twitter Share on Facebook In the end, it is a true poetry, graceful and whimsical, which emerges from these rantings, which attest that the most beautiful gift that one can offer is a primordial deer's femur - that is to say of a deer that was never a child but created thus, in adulthood, by God himself - and that the only thing one can fear is to one day be surrounded by still air, while researchers work to create and invent an alien culture from scratch ...
This news is proving to be invigorating enough to encourage us to reflect on what constitutes our learning, to analyze and question our beliefs, those that would push us to bend reality to our desires, whether it concerns our daily and intimate life, the way to raise children or to build a couple, until the choice of a profession. With this message, possibly serious: " Pretend to have free will " ...
Ted Chiang finally invites us to more humility, offering us some beautiful moments of optimism, for example in this form: " Our universe has perhaps slipped towards balance by emitting nothing but a breath. silent ”.