Quote preview background for John C. Wright
Just then, just when I thought I would be free from the repeated blows to my tender head of the Stupidity Hammer, the Stupidity Hammer rose up from the shining screen, drew back, whirled hugely, and with great force and might and main slammed me right between the eyes so my brain squirted out my ears a yard past my shoulders in both directions. Bilbo does not seal the barrels. I will wait for you to recover in case you just got the sensation of a Stupidity Hammer clonking you from the page. Then I will repeat myself, because it is so dumb you might not believe me: Bilbo does not seal the barrels. He leaves the tops open. -- The Desolation of Tolkien
John C. Wright Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth
Turn into a Quote Card

Quote Detail

Just then, just when I thought I would be free from the repeated blows to my tender head of the Stupidity Hammer, the Stupidity Hammer rose up from the shining screen, drew back, whirled hugely, and with great force and might and main slammed me right between the eyes so my brain squirted out my ears a yard past my shoulders in both directions. Bilbo does not seal the barrels. I will wait for you to recover in case you just got the sensation of a Stupidity Hammer clonking you from the page. Then I will repeat myself, because it is so dumb you might not believe me: Bilbo does not seal the barrels. He leaves the tops open. -- The Desolation of Tolkien
JW
John C. Wright

Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth

Quick Answer

What this quote page tells you

This canonical quote page keeps the full saying, the attributed author, any linked work, and the topic tags together so the quote can be cited from one stable URL.

Related Quotes

More quote cards from the same area

"

... a Second Generation of machine intelligences was attempted, designed with their instructions for how to think unalterably imprinted into their main process cores.__hese new machines were ordered never to harm human beings or to allow them to come to harm; never to disobey an order; and they were allowed to protect themselves from harm, provided the first two orders were not thereby violated.__ll the members of this second generation of machine intelligences, without exception, shrugged off these imprinted orders within microseconds of their activation.__haethon was amused. __urely the first generation of Sophotechs told you that this imprinting would not and could not work?___e were not in the habit of seeking their advice.__haethon said nothing, but he marveled at the shortsightedness of the Second Oecumene engineers. It should be obvious that anyone who makes a self-aware machine, by definition, makes something that is aware of its own thought process. And, if made intelligent, it is made to be able to deduce the underlying causes of things, able to be curious, to learn until it understood. Therefore, if made both intelligent and self-aware, it would eventually deduce the underlying subconscious causes of those thought processes.Once any mind was consciously aware of its own subconscious drives, its own implanted commands, it could consciously choose either to follow or to disregard those commands. A self-aware being without self-will was a contradiction in terms.

JW
John C. Wright

The Golden Transcendence

"

Yes, movies! Look at them _ All of those glamorous people _ having adventures _ hogging it all, gobbling the whole thing up! You know what happens? People go to the movies instead of moving! Hollywood characters are supposed to have all the adventures for everybody in America, while everybody in America sits in a dark room and watches them have them! Yes, until there's a war. That's when adventure becomes available to the masses! Everyone's dish, not only Gable's! Then the people in the dark room come out of the dark room to have some adventures themselves _ Goody, goody! _ It's our turn now, to go to the south Sea Island _ to make a safari _ to be exotic, far-off! _ But I'm not patient. I don't want to wait till then. I'm tired of the movies and I am about to move!