Words&Dirt

“The best way to turn an individual––person or machine––is not to invade them and implant some sort of mimetic virus or any such nonsense, but to make them change their mind themselves, and that is what they did to me, or rather what they persuaded me to do to myself.

They showed me all there was to be shown about my society and theirs and, in the end, I preferred theirs.”

––Look to Windward, by Iain M. Banks, pg. 402

“The thought that I might be wrong and someone else might be right invites the further thought that there must be something that we can be right or wrong about.”

––Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline, by Bernard Williams, pg. 91