《Exhalation》by Ted Chiang

alberty111 | Aug. 22, 2021, 11:02 a.m.

Finish reading this sci-fi short story collection by Ted Chiang. The book consists 9 short stories including:

1. ‘The merchant and the alchemist’s gate’: This story is about a gate that you go through and can travel to the future and back, the merchant try to go back in time to save his wife and just did not succeed. There is one line I like very much: “Coincidence and intention are two side of a tapestry, my lord. You may find one more agreeable to look at, but you cannot say on is true and the other is false.”  We sometimes always think about going back through time to correct our wrongs, but it is life and it is composed by right and wrong, happiness and sadness. So we can just look forward and enjoy the life had brought to us.
2. ‘Exhalation’: this one tells a story about the machine world where air has been altered and seems like the same situation we are experiencing now on earth which nature resources are abused by human.
3. what’s expected of us: this story discuss about a device, a light can be brought up just 10 sec before you press the bottom, which is some kind of a future prediction. This device induce people to think there is actually no such thing as free will. And brought us to the thought of determinism
4. the lifecycle of software objects: this is a story about future where people invented some kind of virtual word and algorithm creates living things which can think, learn and feel like us. It discusses the basic relationship between human and this kind of ‘creatures’. The mutual respect is the baseline like we human treat each other(at least what we should do).
5. Dacey’s patent automatic nanny: a robot nanny raise kid without error but also without love, the important of the presence of the parents to young kids.
6. The truth of fact, the truth of feeling: this one i dont queit understand.
7. the great silence: this one indicates carrot is intellectual creature and has their thought, human keeps looking for alien, yet there is one around us  The great carrot.
8. omphalos: discuss the relation between belief and science. the existence of god?! is there one? are we human special or we just the byproduct of god’s intention. Human are so pathetic, we constantly try to prove we are so special, yet after no more than 100 year, no one will remember most of us.
9. Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom: this talks about a quantum device that allow you to see your paraself at the same time. you can see the different results of you different decisions. People got serious problem with this device, they are jealous about themself, they constantly ask themself: what if I have made that move, what if I say something, what if I didn’t do it. They regret and live in the bubble which form around their paraself.

Don’t regret. Don’t overthink. Don’t bother thinking about the things you can’t change, trying your best to do the things you can make a difference on. NBD NTL

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