Dan Drake 🦆 on Nostr: Cosmic coincidence: I just finished "The Candy House" by Jennifer Egan. I thought it ...
Cosmic coincidence:
I just finished "The Candy House" by Jennifer Egan. I thought it might be amusing to follow that up by reading something by Greg Egan. So I got Sleep and the Soul (https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1302943).
Between those, I happened to hear an interview with the biologist Robert Sapolsky about his new book "Determined" in which he argues against free will.
The Candy House is a book about a sort of social media company that creates a system where you can upload your memories and view those of others.
The first story in Greg's collection, "You and Whose Army?" is about a group of brothers who share their memories!
The cosmic coincidence seems to be that all three of these are pointing towards something. We already have shared memories -- it's called culture! And just as the characters in both Egan works are uncertain about identity when they share experiences and memories with others, and question the nature of the self, Sapolsky's argument likewise makes you think about the nature of the self, since so much of your behavior is determined by those shared memories, that culture (and by so many vagaries of genetics, which perhaps you can view as a biological form of culture...)
npub1t76as6gjr7pzg0taz40e55smjjegmj89ud7g056aqed90hs7cynspe4l63 (npub1t76…4l63)
#sciencefiction #books #biology
I just finished "The Candy House" by Jennifer Egan. I thought it might be amusing to follow that up by reading something by Greg Egan. So I got Sleep and the Soul (https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1302943).
Between those, I happened to hear an interview with the biologist Robert Sapolsky about his new book "Determined" in which he argues against free will.
The Candy House is a book about a sort of social media company that creates a system where you can upload your memories and view those of others.
The first story in Greg's collection, "You and Whose Army?" is about a group of brothers who share their memories!
The cosmic coincidence seems to be that all three of these are pointing towards something. We already have shared memories -- it's called culture! And just as the characters in both Egan works are uncertain about identity when they share experiences and memories with others, and question the nature of the self, Sapolsky's argument likewise makes you think about the nature of the self, since so much of your behavior is determined by those shared memories, that culture (and by so many vagaries of genetics, which perhaps you can view as a biological form of culture...)
npub1t76as6gjr7pzg0taz40e55smjjegmj89ud7g056aqed90hs7cynspe4l63 (npub1t76…4l63)
#sciencefiction #books #biology