The neurological condition of echopraxia is to autonomy as blindsight is to consciousness.

While a number of people have pointed out the various costs and drawbacks of sentience, few if any have taken the next step and wondered out loud if the whole damn thing isn't more trouble than it's worth. Of course it is, people assume; otherwise natural selection would have weeded it out long ago. And they're probably right. I hope they are. "Blindsight" is a thought experiment, a game of "Just suppose" and "What if". Nothing more.On the other hand, the dodos and the Steller sea cows could have used exactly the same argument to prove their own superioirity, a thousand years ago: "if we're so unfit, why haven't we gone extinct?" Why? Because natural selection takes time, and luck plays a role. The biggest boys on the block at any given time aren't necessarily the fittest, or the most efficient, and the game isn't over. The game is never over; there's no finish line this side of heat death. And so, neither can there be any winners. There are only those who haven't yet lost.

Life has been full of evil, and if you don't start asking the right questions, the evil is going to be the end of you.

When you start with a necessary evil, and then over time the necessity passes away, what's left?

Albert grunted. "Do you know what happens to lads who ask too many questions?"Mort thought for a moment."No," he said eventually, "what?"There was silence.Then Albert straightened up and said, "Damned if I know. Probably they get answers, and serve 'em right.

Grace allows for questions ... and is the answer!" EL