Rationality Quotes July 2013

Vaniver

Another month has passed and here is a new rationality quotes thread. The usual rules are:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be upvoted or downvoted separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson.
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

Another month has passed and here is a new rationality quotes thread. The usual rules are:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be upvoted or downvoted separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson.
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

The biggest difference between literary fiction set in the future and Science fiction is that literary fictioneers don't really believe in the future. History is merely a spiral of ever widening crap, and we are on the brink of the abyss. Any opinions otherwise must be exterminated.

Instructor in The Guardian comment section

"The biggest difference between literary fiction set in the future and Science fiction is that science fictioneers don't really believe in the future. History is merely an adventure story of good guys beating adversity, and we are on the brink of a glorious new age. Any opinions otherwise must be sneered at."

Alternatively:

The future is not the realization of our hopes and dreams, a warning to mend our ways, an adventure to inspire us, nor a romance to touch our hearts. The future is just another place in spacetime.

7Kyre13y

Story I heard from a bookshop clerk about the (sadly deceased) Ian M Banks. He was being interviewed on the South Bank Show and the interviewer asked, in a slightly condescending manner, "why did you start writing science fiction ?", and he replied "I wanted to make sure I was good enough first."

-1Document13y

...So every dystopia and cautionary tale is "literature" and inferior, while generic pew-pew space opera is always produced by "real" belief in the future and never pure profit motive or anything of the sort? (Edit: or status motivation, nostalgia/desire to emulate something one likes, "lasers are cool" aestheticism, or whatever other reasons.)