All of etotheipi's Comments + Replies

etotheipi-10

“My gripe is not with lovers of the truth but with truth herself. What succor, what consolation is there in truth, compared to a story? What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney? When the lightning strikes shadows on the bedroom wall and the rain taps at the window with its long fingernails? No. When fear and cold make a statue of you in your bed, don't expect hard-boned and fleshless truth to come running to your aid. What you need are the plump comforts of a story. The soothing, rocking safety of a ... (read more)

-1hairyfigment
I admit that I have no children, but even that last part seems almost wholly false to me. Now, I might tell my hypothetical child that I'm a high Bayesian adept in the Conspiracy (passing actuarial exams/ordeals of initiation counts), that if spirits existed I'd be a mighty ceremonial magician (also probable) and therefore no ghost would dare harm my child.
etotheipi530

"The peril of arguing with you is forgetting to argue with myself. Don’t make me convince you: I don’t want to believe that much."

  • Even More Aphorisms and Ten-Second Essays from Vectors 3.0, James Richardson

The others are quite nice too: http://www.theliteraryreview.org/WordPress/tlr-poetry/

gwern190

That link is now broken. It turns out it was a highly incomplete excerpt from "Vectors 3.0" so I've put By the Numbers on Libgen and put up a complete version taken from the book. (I like some of the aphorisms, so I've ordered the other 2 books to scan as well.)